The river
15 metres of moving water that follows your hands, with a soundscape that never plays the same way twice, all around you.
- Wall projection
- Kinect
- Generative sound in Ableton
- Surround
- Client
- Skellefteå municipality · Society Expo 2026
- Where
- Skellefteå Museum, 27 May 2026 – January 2027
- We did
- Strategy, creative concept, experience design, installations, film
- For
- Tomorrow’s innovative leaders: kids, school classes, young families
Skellefteå is changing faster than almost any town in Europe. New industry, new people, new everything. How do you make a 12-year-old feel part of that?
01 Strategy
From competition to collaboration
What if a sustainable society starts with changing the story, from competitiveness to togetherness?
The brief covered five big challenges: social sustainability, future skills, housing, climate and mobility. Any one of them could fill a museum.
But the real problem was that they were told one at a time. Separate projects, separate owners, separate futures.
So the exhibition doesn’t tell a story. It asks a question: What future will we dare to imagine and create together?
The hero is the visitor. Mostly school classes and young families. The people who will actually live in the Skellefteå being built right now.
- All innovation starts with imagination
- Complex challenges need many perspectives
- The future is built through co-creation
- Sustainability comes from interconnectedness
Before any of this, we mapped how Skellefteå’s 40+ sustainability projects connect. On the floor, with 80 leaders and a lot of yarn. Read the Yarn Jam case →
02 Creative concept
Everything is connected
Nature is the ultimate sustainability, because in nature, everything is connected. Water, forest, ore.
So the river tells the story. Skellefteälven guides you from the ice age, through the industrial age, to a future we build together.
The shape underneath is two loops. An old system peaks and fades, a new one grows in between, carried by people who try new things before anyone asks them to. Every leap in Skellefteå’s history started by breaking a convention.
The message on the way out: the future is interactive. It’s not something that happens to us. It’s something we make together.
Room by room
From the ice age to the town you’ll live in. Here’s what you’ll find on the way.
You walk into the dark, and the river is already talking.
Skellefteälven is the narrator of the whole exhibition. It has seen the ice age, the mines and everything that came after. Curious. Unstoppable. Creative.
It moves when you touch it.
Interactive installations in this room
The forest and the turbine
Pine trunks split down the middle, with light milled into the wood. At the end, a water turbine you walk straight through into room 2. It notices you coming.
- ESP32 motion sensors
- Machine learning people detection
- WLED light
- Built-in speakers
- Set by the scenography school
Then the town arrives. Ore, power plants, railway, smelter.
Every leap Skellefteå ever made broke a convention first. This room is 150 years of that, out of the archive and onto the walls.
Interactive installations in this room
The documentary wall
An interactive documentary film. A depth camera tracks everyone in the room, and each of you becomes energy in 150 years of Skellefteå’s story.
- Depth camera
- TouchDesigner
- Generative music in Ableton
The lamp theremin
Two hands, two slightly out-of-tune tones. Tune them together and the bulb blazes, and nine more lamps light up down the room.
- Ultrasonic sensors
- TRIAC-dimmed bulb
- Raspberry Pi
- Networked dimmers
A town is the people in it. So the walls are left for them.
In 2013, Skellefteå asked its citizens ten questions about the future. We asked them again. First you listen, then you answer. Every voice ends up somewhere in the room.
Interactive installations in this room
The wall that listens
Put your ear to the wall and hear what Skellefteå answered in the citizen dialog of 2013. Then answer the same ten questions into a pipe. AI checks it’s a real answer, and minutes later it plays back from the wall.
- 20 channels of real-time audio
- Berget AI
- Custom Python
- WLED
The influencer booth
Want to be an influencer? Start now. Behind the curtain.
The last room is Skellefteå as it could become. Five challenges hang from the ceiling: mobility, climate, housing, skills, social sustainability.
Glowing threads tie them together, because none of them can be solved alone. Play with one, and the light runs out along the threads.
Everything here is meant to be climbed, pedalled, spun or slid down.
Interactive installations in this room
- Yes! Press yes, and play the next note of Den blomstertid nu kommer. Read more →
- The Skellefteå triangle A game about the port, the airport and the travel centre, played on a 1970s tandem bike. Read more →
- Spin the house Spin a 3D-printed house, and a generative facade grows to match. Read more →
- ACE A 1.5 cubic metre architect’s model with a window that follows your eyes. Read more →
- Recycling Feed an old phone to the scrap monster, and see what it’s made of. Read more →
- High five wall High-five the wall, and it asks you a question about AI. Read more →
- SkyKraft Blow, and the turbine spins. Read more →
- The slide It knows when you’re on your way down, and sends light along with you. Read more →
- The sound of the room Six speakers, one per corner: everything you play with answers with a bird. Read more →
- The greenhouse It lights up with the cloud every time someone in the room plays with something. Read more →
Yes!
The first thing you meet in the future: can we make our society better for people and nature? Press yes, and you play the next note of Den blomstertid nu kommer. The next visitor plays the one after.
- ESP32 button
- MQTT
- Note-by-note sample player
- Shimmer reverb
The Skellefteå triangle
A game about the port, the airport and the new travel centre. The controller is a 1970s tandem bike. Two people pedal, the world moves.
- Unreal Engine
- Tandem bike on a smart trainer
- ANT+
- Raspberry Pi
Spin the house
Turn a 3D-printed house in your hands, and a whole apartment block facade grows on the screen to match.
- TouchDesigner
- Generative facade
- ESP32 with hall sensors
- Machine learning
- Custom controller
ACE
A home-built architect’s model, 1.5 cubic metres. Look through the screen in its side and see the inside of the house, in perspective from wherever you stand.
- Orbbec Femto depth camera
- Head-tracked perspective
- Built-in screen
Recycling
Pick an old phone, controller or pair of headphones on the iPad, and feed it to the scrap monster. It chews, swallows and burps out the metals inside.
- iPad
- Raspberry Pi
- Custom Python application
- MQTT
High five wall
Give the wall a high five, and it asks you something back. About AI, and who’s steering your ship.
- ESP32
- Accelerometer
- MQTT
- iPad
SkyKraft
Blow, and the turbine spins. The harder you blow, the more power you make.
- TouchDesigner
- Microphone input
- Real-time render
The slide
The fastest way down from the future. It knows when you’re on your way, and sends a pulse of light down with you.
- Custom ESP32
- Machine learning people detection
- Light pulses
The sound of the room
Six speakers, one for each corner of the future. Whatever you play with answers with a bird in its own corner, and the birds fly to the cloud in the middle. When it flashes, it thunders.
- Sample player in Python
- 6 channels
- Every installation over MQTT
The greenhouse
Climate and environment. Take a seat, and watch it light up every time someone in the room plays with something.
- WLED
- Custom Python switchboard
- MQTT
Film
The whole walk
Got something big to say? Let’s make it a place.
Linus Johansson · [email protected] · More photos and the press release in the press room