LDV 500
Leonardo da Vinci – 500 Years of Genius
Creative Direction & Immersive System Design
Immersive Master
A landmark immersive exhibition celebrating the life and legacy of Leonardo da Vinci.
With only 15 to 20 confidently attributed paintings, the challenge was to evoke Leonardo’s genius beyond the poplar, crafting a visually stunning experience that spanned over 3,000 square metres and soared four storeys high, all under a tight five-month timeline.
As Creative Director, I led the conceptual narrative, experiential vision, and motion systems, implementing my personally developed volume capture methodology as the backbone of the exhibition’s immersive design.
A Spatial Narrative
Discovering Leonardo at a personal level, beyond his fame, beyond his works, was central to building an immersive experience that felt intimate and human. It wasn’t enough to animate and present his creations; we needed to enter his mind, uncover his passions, and explore his obsessions to understand the man beneath the myth.
His writings in his Codices contained stories of kites visiting him in infancy, sparking a lifelong fascination with flight. As a young man, Dark caves adorned with whalebones etched a thirst for knowledge that never faded which led to dreams of deluges haunting him into old age. These deeply personal fragments shaped our journey, unmasking the austerity of his legacy and revealing a man driven by wonder, fear, and insatiable curiosity.
Volume the Genius
Bringing my bespoke volume capture technique, developed in Cinema 4D using unlit shaders, enabled us to build key sequences around the architecture of the space, immersing audiences in a painterly vision of Renaissance Italy. We guided visitors through pivotal moments in Leonardo’s life, then deeper into his codices, artworks, and mechanical explorations.
The system proved highly effective, iterative, and fast to render at scale, allowing us to compose environments and direct the narrative flow, whether dropping into Vinci, passing beneath the waves in Venice, or soaring through up into the skies of France, surrounded by his innumerable inventions.