A Peek Through the Dark Room

Developed in partnership with the Alice Austen House Museum in Staten Island, NY, A Peek Through the Dark Room reimagines the museum's historic second-floor photographic darkroom—an architectural space where pioneering photographer Alice Austen (1866–1952) developed thousands of glass-plate negatives, but which remains physically inaccessible to visitors unable to climb the narrow nineteenth-century staircase.

To bring the second-floor darkroom down into the accessible first-floor gallery, our team designed a multi-sensory exhibition system combining tactile architectural reliefs, two 1:12 scale physical darkroom models, and a browser-based WebAR plate-development experience (aliceaustenhouse.netlify.app (opens in new tab)).

Engineering & Exhibition Deliverables#

1. Browser-Based WebAR Darkroom Experience (AAH-WebAR (opens in new tab)): I engineered the companion mobile web and WebAR application (aliceaustenhouse.netlify.app), allowing museum visitors to scan markers on their smartphones without installing a native app, peer inside a virtual reconstruction of Austen's workspace, and interactively step through nineteenth-century glass-plate negative chemical development under virtual safelight illumination.
2. 1:12 Scale Physical Darkroom Models: Two precision-fabricated 1:12 miniature reconstructions of the historic darkroom interior, complete with miniature developing trays, period cabinetry, glass plates, and embedded warm/red safelight LEDs that invite visitors to look through a physical peephole.
3. Tactile Staircase Reliefs: A sequence of laser-cut and 3D-printed tactile architectural reliefs installed along the first-floor staircase wall, translating the darkroom's exterior carpentry and spatial layout into touchable surfaces for blind and low-vision visitors.

1:12 scale darkroom models, tactile staircase reliefs, and mobile WebAR experience at the Alice Austen House Museum