Shift Visitor Experience Elysium by SB&Co

Visitor Experience for the SHIFT Embassy

Key Takeaways

Lead Experience Design
SB&Co is lead experience design for the ‘The Elysium’ visitor experience in Rotterdam Rocks. The 5.000 m2 immersive experience is to motivate and educate through immersive art, inspiring stories and practical pathways for action.

Partners
We teamed up with Expo Pavilion Group (EPG) and Tamschick Media + Space (TMS), experts in designing innovative, large-scale and emotionally powerful experiences.

Behavioral design
The Shift Experience is not just an exhibition. It is a behavioural system designed to turn awareness into action and individual intention into collective change. It tells the story of the largest comeback of our time, unfolding one step at a time, powered by millions of people moving together.

SHIFTing the world towards a lasting future

The Shift Embassy is a visionary proposal for a new cultural destination in Rotterdam’s future Waterkant district. The building, ‘Rotterdam Rocks’, designed by MVRDV, aims to welcome up to one million visitors annually, inspiring people to play an active role in restoring the ecological balance of our planet.

Part of the Embassy is the Experience ‘Elysium’. Elysium is an immersive journey that turns climate awareness into personal action. Designed at the intersection of design, technology, and behavioural science, it guides each visitor towards one realistic next step that fits their life.

“I believe people are more open to change when they can relate it to their own lives. Rather than presenting one universal solution, we explored how the experience could connect broad societal challenges to the different lifestyles, motivations and interests of its visitors.” says Dirk Bertels. “At its core lies a simple insight: change does not happen in one giant leap. It unfolds in stages. Built on behavioural science, the experience can guide visitors step by step, helping each person take the next move that matches their readiness.”

The Elysium

The Shift Embassy’s programming will be an immersive, multi-sensory experience addressing the past, present, and future of life on Earth. This experience is called ‘The Elysium’, for its goal is to inspire and educate.

To achieve this, The Elysium will exist of state-of-the-art immersive multimedia technology to create an ultra-modern, artistic 360-degree visualization of world history, the dire consequences of today’s insatiable economic principles, and the many inspiring economic, circular, and community-based initiatives that already exist.

All experiences will be grounded in scientific data. By deepening each visitor’s understanding of their individual roles in shaping a better future for themselves, their local environment, and the planet, Elysium aims to show how easy and enjoyable it can be to make a difference in practical, everyday ways.

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Visitor Experience

The journey begins with awareness. Visitors are immersed in the world they’ve been given and the systems shaping our planet and everyday lives. The past and present life on Earth. Rather than overwhelming them with information, the experience focuses on self-recognition, visitors begin to understand what is relevant to them, what shapes their thinking, and what holds them back from change. The shift begins when awareness becomes personal.

Dirk Bertels tinkers: “Could this experience be a hyper-personalized journey. Instead of offering generic solutions, content, interactions, and guidance adapt to the individual, helping them find one step better within their existing behaviour, rather than demanding a whole new one. These are small, realistic adjustments that fit daily life and build momentum over time.”

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Expo Pavilion Group (EPG)

Expo Pavilion Group (EPG) is an international strategic design practice specializing in visitor experience, narrative, and destination development for World Expos, museums, cultural institutions, and public attractions. Working at the intersection of strategy, storytelling, design, and operations, EPG develops the experience architecture that transforms ambitious visions into coherent visitor journeys. From national pavilions and museums to visitor centres and cultural destinations, EPG aligns story, space, content, technology, and stakeholder ambition into experiences that are emotionally engaging, operationally effective, and memorable.

Tamschick Media + Space (TMS)

Tamschick Media + Space (TMS) designs experiences that connect people.

to what truly matters. TMS works with museums, brands, architects, and developers on projects requiring clarity, purpose and long-term relevance. Vision leads before form, is realized with precision and sustained beyond opening.

TMS operates internationally, with headquarters in Berlin. Working as creative authors and equal partners, vision is shaped collaboratively. TMS translates complexity into clarity through the fusion of content intelligence, spatial thinking and storytelling. The studio’s expertise is recognized worldwide for its focus on relevance, responsibility and quality.

Shift Enterprise

The building is an initiative of social enterprise Shift, which – in the words of founder Don Ritzen – aims to create the social momentum required to “shift from complacency and powerlessness to hope, imagination and collective action for our shared future.”

“Climate change is one of the defining challenges of our time and deserves a response and destination that matches its scale. The bold and distinctive design of Rotterdam Rocks invites visitors to explore some of the most important questions of our time. Where do we come from? Where are we going? What role can we play ourselves in shaping the future of our planet? Through wonder, curiosity and imagination, the building and its immersive experience encourages visitors to envision a different future and their role in it.”.

– Don Ritzen

Competition

The Shift International Architecture Competition launched in January 2025 as a two-stage competition inviting multidisciplinary teams of architects, engineers, artists, scientists, ecologists, and other experts to develop holistic design proposals. After receiving eighty proposals for stage one, five finalists – Ecosistema Urbano, Heatherwick Studio, Mecanoo, MVRDV and Office for Political Innovation – continued to the final stage and presented their design early March 2026.

After completing a verification process for the jury’s top two ranked teams, Shift selected MVRDV with collaborators Arup, Arcadis, DGMR, SB&Co and Joris Laarman Labs as the winning Team and entered a short pre-design phase in June to further test and improve the design. The refined design is now being unveiled for the first time, ahead of a local participation process in autumn 2026.

The jury described the winning concept as follows:

“MVRDV’s proposal is a remarkably bold, powerful statement that we expect will capture visitors’ imagination and encourage them to come back again and again. Rotterdam Rocks departs from how sustainability is traditionally communicated, bringing together joy, discovery, and surprise into a new architectural language. We anticipate this building and its program will invite people to rethink their everyday behavior and encourage new ways of living sustainably together”

The jury

Aric Chen (Director, Zaha Hadid Foundation)
Astrid Leyssens, (Founder, We Are Impact Collective)
Ben van Berkel (Founder, UNS)
Carice van Houten, (Activist, Actor)
Clemens Brenninkmeijer, (Chair Family Community COFRA)
Dr. Lewis Akenji, (Executive Director, Hot or Cool Institute)
Géke Roelink, (Director, NEMO Science Museum)
Lodewijk Hoekstra, (Ambassador and Presenter, NL Greenlabel)
Matthias Schuler, (Founder, TRANSSOLAR)
Mireia Luzárraga, (Co-Founder, TAKK)
Nicole Maarsen, (Independent Real Estate Professional).

Find out more at:

shift.world