Uniting Community and Creativity
Seeper led the experience design of Sunderland Culture House, the National Centre for Creative Smart Cities, from original vision to opening day. A brief to advise on audio-visual hardware became a five-year collaboration with Sunderland City Council, shaping what the building should feel like to move through, discover and belong in.
We worked alongside FaulknerBrowns Architects from an early stage, so the architecture and the experience evolved together. A centralised content platform, the atrium’s large-format screens, the interactive City Eye, the 360-degree Immersion Gallery and the building’s wayfinding all run as one connected system — not a set of separate installations.
Aims
Culture House redefines how people engage with council services, fostering creativity, inclusivity and cultural exchange.
Immersive experience design, paired with a content platform simple enough for Culture House’s own team to run, gives diverse voices a stage, nurtures local talent, and celebrates the city’s heritage, strengthening the community long after opening day.
Insights
For the atrium, we drew on Sunderland’s history and the reality of a working library, welcoming every visitor while still arresting attention in moments. The result: three evolving “Atmospheric” worlds. Sea, a bioluminescent, waterfall-like effect drawn from Sunderland’s coastline. Glass, referencing the city’s glassmaking heritage. Nature, a hyper-real woodland reflecting the building’s environmental ambitions. The same content plays across the Immersion Gallery, where spatial sound turns the space into something visitors move through, not just look at.
City Eye offers a curated, regularly refreshed interactive experience — quizzes and city stories authored by the venue team, including “Sunderland Stories,” which shares real examples of residents using the city in new ways. Local organisations, including Kielder Observatory and local theatre companies, feature throughout via presence-triggered “micro exhibitions” on the atrium’s multimedia bookcases.
Architectural integration meets technology built to last: one system running everything from the atrium’s vast visuals to the smallest bookcase screen, engineered for Culture House’s team to run and evolve for years to come.
Coverage
Sunderland Culture House opened its doors on 12 September 2026, a landmark in Riverside Sunderland’s regeneration, uniting digital innovation with cultural heritage to engage and inspire residents and visitors alike.
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