It’s the perfect excuse to have an inside holiday.
The boring elevator ride up numerous levels can be a nightmare for anyone who could be borderline claustrophobic. So, how can you make a small human box larger than it actually is? The oldest trick in the book is to put up mirrors to cast the illusion of a larger space. But in a marvelous feat of engineering and technology, instead of making a glass elevator with a horrible view of cables and brick walls, someone has gone one further.
Australian branch of Swiss owned Schindler Lifts has teamed up with architects Davenport Campbell & Partners to create an inside / outside-of-this-world elevator experience by creating a 360 degree visual display of scenic Australian areas that are so jaw-dropping, you want to cancel your trip and head there instead.
In this video demonstration, lifts (or elavators, depending what side of the world your water flushes) in Sydney’s Darling Park has been fitted with the virtual setup, bringing the beach, bushland and many other visual deliciousness into the heart of the CBD.
As the YouTube channel Traffik explains:
A multi-sensory installation where users travel up ‘glass’ elevators looking out to views of iconic Australian natural wonders including islands, rainforests, deserts, beaches, mountains and sea cliffs, giving visitors the opportunity to experience locations they may never get the chance to visit in real life.
The immersive experience has been implemented across six elevators in the newly refurbished Darling Park precinct, supporting a strategic play to put Darling Park on the map and make it ‘Sydney’s most vibrant commercial district’.
Elevator journeys include the vast depths of Kings Canyon in the Northern Territory, remote Lord Howe Island 800 km off the east coast, the breathtaking Ebor Waterfalls in Dorrigo NSW, the rugged sea cliffs around Cape Pillar in Tasmania and the peaks of the iconic Blue Mountains – with each experience accompanied by a rich soundscape.
We travelled Australia capturing 6k drone footage spanning 100 vertical metres in each location, then mapped the footage to the rise and fall of the elevators using a combination of lift-controller data and accelerometers on the top of each lift car. Elevator cars are lined with 90-inch high-definition portrait screens and the experience is driven by a high-end PC secured to the roof of the elevator car running a custom Unity software application networked back to the motor rooms at the top of the building.
Amazing stuff… just imagine if you were riding one of their lifts and the next thing you realise, you’re riding Dreamworld Gold Coast’s ‘Tower Of Terror.’
