Little Second City

Chicago Children's Museum outpost

2025 — Built

Exhibition Design

Little Second City is a children’s museum outpost located in downtown Chicago. Our exhibition design features five interactive zones that offer developmentally appropriate playful learning experiences for kids age 3–8. By sampling and abstracting the iconic silhouettes of local landmarks, the interactive 2D and 3D graphics create an immersive and distinct sense of place. The project expands the boundaries of experiential graphic design by demonstrating how inhabitable, intimate, and interactive spatial qualities augment the visitor’s agency and position architectural installations as drivers of developmentally appropriate play and learning experiences.

—The Chicago Skyline Screen presents building-shaped pegboards that invite you to create multi-colored patterns of "windows" on iconic skyscrapers that line the Chicago River’s north bank, including Marina City, the former IBM Building (and current home of Little Second City), the Wrigley Building, and Tribune Tower.
—The Small Worlds Play Zone features a custom graphic cityscape rug, with wood blocks and vehicles for pretend play.
—The Skyline Alley is a gross motor area that invites kiddos to climb along an architectural path of soft sculptures.
—The Skyline Activity Wall hosts magnetic tangrams and other interactive geometric tiles that invite open-ended pattern-making.
—Finally, the Physics Nook features magnetic, wall-mounted, and interactive tracks for kids to design their own ball-falling scenarios to test gravity and explore engineering.

Exhibition Design: Could Be Design
Content Collaborator: Chicago Children's Museum
Fabrication: Zak Rose
Photography: Brian Griffin