Understanding the Challenge
EVA Berlin 2025 is an international conference on artificial intelligence, digitality, and culture. As part of an academic project at BTU Cottbus–Senftenberg, I redesigned its visual identity, website, and spatial experience for the 2025 edition, hosted at Berlin's Abguss-Sammlung. The proposal also needed to address several key requirements:
Respond to the unique context of the Abguss-Sammlung and its historic plaster sculpture collection.
Balance digital innovation with the museum's historical setting.
Accommodate talks, workshops, exhibitions, and networking within a flexible spatial layout.
Designing the Solution
Rather than treating each deliverable separately, I developed a cohesive conference experience across physical and digital touchpoints. The proposal was built around two core design principles:
Create a seamless visitor journey across branding, digital products, and physical space.
Bridge digital innovation with the museum's historical setting.
Work with the existing logo to preserve its established recognition.
Shift from isolated deliverables to a unified experience design approach.
Design a coherent cross-touchpoint system for the conference experience.
Develop a visual language that merges cultural-historical and digital contexts into a unified design system.
Design References
Mextropoli (Mexico City): a multi-scalar conference ecosystem where talks, workshops, and cultural events extend into public space through installations like the pavilion competition, creating a unified experience across different urban and institutional settings.
Universidad de los Andes (Faculty of Architecture & Design): a highly experimental digital identity where the website acts as a flexible canvas, combining vibrant color systems, expressive imagery, and a strong digital/tech-driven visual language.
Frei Otto – “Thinking through Models” exhibition: an exhibition where physical textile-based models translate directly into the spatial design, making the gallery space an extension of the structural principles explored in the work.
Reframing cultural heritage through digital experiences
The Abguss-Sammlung, as the exhibition venue, establishes a dialogue between classical sculpture and digital interpretation, creating a contrast between cultural heritage and contemporary technologies.
The experience unfolds across three layers: Discovery, Participation, and Immersion.
Discovery — users encounter the conference through its visual identity and website.
Participation — attendees navigate the program via an app and interact with the exhibition through augmented reality.
Immersion — the venue becomes a flexible spatial system for talks, workshops, exhibitions, and encounters.
Immersion: Spatial Strategies
The design is driven by strict spatial constraints: the Abguss-Sammlung is a dense, permanent plaster cast collection with limited storage capacity and no possibility for permanent intervention. All decisions therefore operate through temporary, reversible, and fully reconfigurable systems.
Sculpture reconfiguration — plaster casts are repositioned to create new spatial relationships and enhance contrast between exhibition and conference functions.
Modular partition system — lightweight metal mesh panels on wheels define flexible zones for talks, workshops, and exhibitions without altering the architecture.
Flexible furniture system — all functional elements (seating, podiums, café areas) are movable, enabling shifts between conference, social, and exhibition setups.
Temporary spatial marking — removable vinyl floor graphics structure circulation, zoning, and program distribution across the venue.
Discovery
Communication layer — posters and a banner system introduce the conference identity and extend it into public space.
Website — redesigned to centralize information and provide access to program and schedule.
Participation
Mobile application — a digital companion integrating program navigation and interactive content.
Virtual guide (AR feature) — users scan sculptures to access information via audio or text, and enter an interactive mode to modify, decorate, and photograph them using augmented reality.
Transition
Looking back, this project marked a transition from spatial and interior design towards experience design, bridging my background in architecture with an emerging interest in UX and digital interaction.
First system approach
It was my first time working across physical and digital layers in a single system. With no prior experience in tools like Figma or Framer, I developed the project using familiar tools such as Illustrator and PowerPoint, which shaped an initial self-taught approach to UX design.
Holistic design
The project highlighted the value of designing holistic experiences that connect spatial, physical, and digital touchpoints within a single coherent system.
