Empire State Building

An iconic piece of the city

The spectacular reimagining of the Empire State Building's Observatory experience is now open to the public.

In addition to its singular views of New York, the building now boasts state-of-the-art exhibits about the World’s Most Famous Building and the city around it.

Working with Thinc Design in New York, the brief was to deliver an authentic experience of the building’s history as an iconic piece of city.

Immersive exhibits

To achieve this goal, we designed a series of immersive exhibits to transport visitors through the building's history as a wonder of the modern world: its innovative and rapid construction process, its grand opening in 1931, its continued leadership in energy efficiency to this day, and its role as an urban campus that provides singular amenities for its occupants.

Capturing the building’s essential character

Visitors experience the building as an icon of popular culture: whether in movies, broadcast media, comics or commercials, the Empire State Building stands for New York City in the popular imagination.

The exhibits plunge visitors directly into an epic scene with King Kong himself, while also giving them a taste of the building's many other starring moments on the silver screen.

The experience captures the building’s essential character, its place in the cityscape of New York, and its place in cultural history.

A collaboration

The renewed Empire State Building experience was completed with contributions from Beneville Studios, IDEO, Squint/Opera, and a host of other consultants and production partners.