The new building of the Shipwreck Conservation Centre is currently being finished. Apart from historical boats, the main attractions will include multimedia kiosks and interactive educational stations, which will be prepared and implemented by New Amsterdam. The creation of this new museum branch involves extensive digitisation of the Museum’s collections. Its online counterpart, Virtual Institution of Culture, will also be created by New Amsterdam.

Established in 1962, the National Maritime Museum is a national cultural institution, whose mission is to preserve Polish heritage relating to shipbuilding, boatbuilding, maritime, inland navigation and sailing and to promote knowledge in those fields. The Museum boasts a collection of unique exhibits – from authentic yachts to large-size structural elements of medieval wrecks and boats. The new branch will combine exhibition purposes and educational functions with the conservation studio, where visitors will be able to watch the actual work of conservators.

New Amsterdam was entrusted with the task of creating a Virtual Institution of Culture, i.e. an integrated IT system, which will enable the visitors to experience the collections online. The virtual repository will be available through a browser as a trilingual catalogue that will include extensive photographic documentation and 3D scans together with technical documentation and description of digitised objects from the collections of NMM. The Virtual Institution of Culture will also make a virtual tour around expositions of every branch of the Museum possible and offer a 360° panorama.

Objects from the Museum will be given new life in our applications.

Shipyard creation will enable creative interaction with digitised museum objects; application for mobile devices Yachts will put historical ships to sea again; whereas Objects from wrecks will bring elements of a medieval wreck, W-5 Miedziowiec, back to life. The Augmented Reality (AR) technology incorporated into the applications will educate the visitors to the Centre about original use of historical objects without the need for additional elements of design at the exhibition. The project will be accompanied by educational games about maritime and history dedicated for children and teenagers. As part of work on the Virtual Institution of Culture, we have prepared visual identity design, graphic design for the VIC website and graphic design for all applications to be included.

In parallel, we are working on interactive stations that will enhance educational activities for children and teenagers. They will present information about exhibited objects, everyday work of archaeologists and conservators, or sailing techniques. Moreover, New Amsterdam is designing and will deliver infokiosks, where additional information about the National Maritime Museum and current events will be made available, along with educational videos devoted to issues of conservation and archaeology.

Project Shipwreck Conservation Centre with Studio Warehouse in Tczew is being conducted as a part of the Conservation and Revitalization of National Heritage Programme and has been co-financed by the Norway Grants and EEA Grants, as well as by Polish national funds. The total cost of the project is 22 million Polish złoty.