Man, machine & the Metaverse
Hyundai
2022 / CES / Las Vegas
Cheil Germany / Uniplan
summary
A change in perspective
At CES 2022, Hyundai unveiled a new class of machines — "meta machines" built to transform mobility across entire industries. The challenge wasn't just to display them, but to introduce them: to make visitors genuinely curious about technologies that most people had never encountered, and some might instinctively distrust.
core idea
The Stage
Bringing humans and machines together on a shared stage felt like the right answer. Not a showroom, not a demo floor — a stage, with all the theatrical weight that implies. The concept leaned into the tension between familiarity and the unknown, creating a setting where that encounter could happen on equal terms.
key moves
A large monolithic volume, its outer skin clad in mirror — imposing in scale, but dissolved into the surrounding environment by its reflective surface. Mirror is used to underline the reflection of the real world into the digital realm.
Inside, 4-meter LED walls wrap the central stage on all sides, creating a unified atmosphere and a sense of total immersion. The environment exists purely to support the interaction between visitor and machine — nothing competes for attention.
Behind the stage, an interactive zone invited visitors to step further in — entering a parallel reality where the boundary between the physical machines and their digital counterparts blurred. A natural extension of the encounter that began on stage.
my role
I led the design from concept through final stages — across multiple rounds of ideation, design development, and detail design.
outcome
What made this exhibition work was its focus. No cars, no secondary products or services — just a singular, sustained encounter between man and machine. That restraint gave it clarity, and the clarity made it memorable.
