The Lost Palace (2016)

Interactive Experience, Whitehall, UK

The Lost Palace was an interactive exploration of the spaces and stories of the Palace of Whitehall, 300 years after it was lost to fire. The experience overlaid the lost Palace of Whitehall onto the modern day streets of central London via interactive soundscapes encompassing past sounds and forgotten conversations, accessed through a handheld wooden device and scorched-timber recreations of the Gothic architecture, mounted where they once stood.

"The Lost Palace has widely been seen as a marker in the sand for immersive heritage practice - an ambitious production, especially in technical terms." – The Museum Review, 2018

The project was born from a prototype Heart of a King – a wooden hand held object that guided people along the final walk of Charles I via a heartbeat. Both Heart of a King and The Lost Palace were commissioned by Historic Royal Palaces, and ran over the summers of 2016 and 17. It won awards including the 2017 Museums and Heritage Innovation Award and the 2017 Heritage In Motion Best Achievement Award. The project led to a series of commissions at Hampton Court Palace for permanent interactive exhibitions between 2017 - 2019.

Photos: Duncan McKenzie