WPI Seaport

An Innovation and Collaboration Space in Boston's Newest District

Client: Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Project: Art Direction, Brand Management, Project Management
Address: 303 Congress Street, Boston
Collateral: Branding, Interior Design, Experiential Design

In January of 2018, WPI opened a satellite location in the heart of Boston's most up-and-coming neighborhood for innovation, the Seaport. Located at ground level on the Fort Point Channel, the space is directly on the city's HarborWalk and overlooks the financial district across the water.

WPI Seaport and its presence are meant to foster collaborative research and corporate partnerships with businesses in Boston, and then funnel those relationships back to Worcester. It will also create a space for student projects and research, corporate and university advancement outreach, and events such as career fairs for employers in the city looking to hire WPI graduates. In a more philosophical context, the space is meant as a stepping stone into a larger global presence, encapsulating WPI's spirit of innovation and its mission to create positive impact in the world through its 45+ project centers around the globe.

In order to create a brand and interior experience that reflected the goals of the space, I coordinated a collaboration between two divisions of WPI (Marketing Communications and Corporate & Professional Education), and three creative firms (Tuck and Tuck Architects, PopKitchen, and Trivium Interactive). My involvement included everything from selecting fabrics for furniture fabrication to art direction of the brand, wall graphics, projector motion graphics, and email invitations, to selection of hardware for the 8-foot video wall and contract negotiations for software development of a custom content management system for the interactive elements of the interior space.

Since the opening, I have continued to work on the digital experiential design using the entryway projector and video wall to customize the space for visitors and events depending on future programming schedules. We are able to remotely access both systems and display custom designs and videos to reflect what we are promoting or who we are welcoming on any given day. Between an interior plan for furniture that can adapt and change to suit multiple uses and events, to these remotely customizable experiential elements, we have succeeded in making the space something that can transform itself for our many different audiences and needs with little effort or resources involved.

Branding: PopKitchen
Architecture and Interior: Tuck and Tuck Architects
Projector and Video Wall: Trivium Interactive
Fabrication: ICL Imaging
Projector Graphics: Michael Aiello