Hyde Park Barracks Museum
Retelling the history of Australia’s colonization from the inside out.
Overview
The Hyde Park Barracks is a UNESCO World Heritage site with a complicated soul. Over 200 years, it has been a convict prison, an immigration depot, and an asylum—all while standing on stolen Aboriginal land. The challenge was to tell these conflicting stories without prioritizing one over the others. Our solution was to strip the walls bare and fill the air with voices. Using a sophisticated location-aware audio system, we created a "living soundscape" that tracks visitors as they move, allowing them to hear the history of the colony through the ears of those who lived it—from the convicts trapped inside to the First Nations people displaced by its construction.
Services
Visitor Experience Design, Exhibit Design, Media Design, Media & Software Development
The Details
The museum minimizes traditional signage to let the architecture speak. The narrative is delivered primarily through an immersive audio layer that acts as a "ghost" guiding the visitor. As guests wander the hammock rooms or the asylum wards, they trigger 3D soundscapes specific to their location—the clinking of chains, the whispers of inmates, or the testimony of Elders. Combined with projection mapping that visualizes the spread of the colony, the experience forces a sensory confrontation with the past, proving that you don't need text on a wall to feel the human cost of history.
