IBM
Watson IoT Center
the brief
IBM aimed to establish a global HQ for Watson IoT in Munich’s Highlight Towers, featuring a ground-floor lobby and 20th-floor experience zones designed as a client experience center for international visitors. These spaces needed to make cognitive tech tangible, blending storytelling, case studies, and hands-on engagement to express IBM’s vision globally and spark new business opportunities.
I was part of an international creative team that brought the Watson IoT Center to life. I led creative direction, concept, and storytelling - shaping the visitor journey and defining interaction principles. With architecture, content, and technology in constant alignment, I supervised motion and sound design to unify atmosphere and narrative, co-directed key film shoots, and remained on-site in Munich to guide production and safeguard the concept through every detail.
Category
Client Experience Center
context
IBM Watson IoT Headquarter
services
Creative Direction
Concept and Storytelling
Design Management
Onsite Implementation
client
IBM Germany
lead agency and partners
Vok Dams Events
CE+Co
Universal Design Studio
Map Project Office
location
Munich, Germany
year
2016/2017
Awards
Clio Award (Bronze)
New York Design Award (Gold)
DDC Award (Finalist)
photo credits
Bernhard Rohnke, Andreas Acktun
Visitors entered the Center through a focused, open lobby showcasing IBM’s vision and real-world IoT stories beneath a dynamic, data-driven light installation. From there, the journey flowed into the immersive client experience zones.
A plinth table displayed real IoT devices - sensors and actuators taken from a BMW i8 - providing a tactile encounter with the physical components behind the Internet of Things. Adjacent to the table, three large bookcases presented rows of volumes linked to the same vehicle. Each of them integrated digital displays that visualized the vehicle’s data streams, weaving them into the pages of books and transforming static volumes into living records of performance.
At the heart of the experience stood the “Munich Table,” a large-scale interactive surface where visitors could explore case studies in depth. In this meeting space, the table became the experiential centerpiece around which guests and hosts gathered. What began as a guided showcase of industries and solutions quickly evolved into an open exchange, shifting from presentation to dialogue.
Physical artifacts, digital layers of information, and
human conversation merged seamlessly - embodying
the ambition at the core of the Watson IoT Center:
to align these three worlds.
