iNatural History Museum · South Kensington
Visions of Nature
The Museum's first mixed-reality experience, imagining a thriving planet 100 years into the future through immersive technology and expert science.
Hope, the narrator in your headset, asks you to hold out a hand, and a holographic Darwin's frog hops into your palm. In her 2125 it thrives in the city parks of Concepción, Chile.
You wear a Microsoft HoloLens 2 with a clear visor and walk through the Zoology Spirit Building, so the real specimens stay in view behind the holograms. Over about 20 minutes you pass through eight ecosystems: lynx back in the Scottish Highlands, the Great Green Wall in Africa's Sahel, dead Caribbean reefs beside thriving Atlantic ones, and narlugas in an Arctic with no ice.
Time Out gave it three stars, calling it an "intriguing curio" whose ideas needed more room, and noted the odd mix of upbeat Hope and a future where about 10 percent of species have died out. Its critic still thought it well worth the hike into the depths of the Orange Zone. Tickets are £9.95 for adults and children, include Museum entry, and can't be refunded. Arrive 30 minutes early.
Look for
A Darwin's frog in your hand
Hold out your palm when Hope asks and the hologram frog leaps onto it, a species the show imagines thriving in Concepción's urban parks.
The narlugas
Narwhal-beluga hybrids swim through an Arctic that has lost its ice, families of them playing with kelp.
Lynx in the Highlands
The trip begins in a Scottish Highlands where lynx have been reintroduced.
Two reefs, two fates
Dead Caribbean coral sits against colder Atlantic reefs that people of the future are helping to breed.
Good for
- An Hour Or Less
- Locals Who've Seen It All
- Teenagers
About 20 min
Skip if
You're bringing children under 10: the headsets are too big for them.
With kids
Ages 10 and up only, because of the headset size, and children pay the full £9.95. The headset weighs about 570 grams and has to be held up for the whole 20 minutes.
Free in the same building
- Blue Zone: Dinosaurs and Ocean LifeThe animatronic T. rex, an 82ft diplodocus cast, marine reptiles, and vast mammal skeletons - the museum's most popular galleries.
- Darwin CentreAn eight-storey cocoon housing 28 million insect and plant specimens. Scientists work behind glass - you can watch real research in progress.
- Green Zone: Hintze Hall and Earth SciencesHope the blue whale hangs in Hintze Hall, alongside fossils, minerals, a rare meteorite collection, and the jewel-filled Vault gallery.
- Red Zone: Earth GalleriesRide an escalator through a giant globe into galleries on volcanoes, earthquakes, minerals, and the forces that shape our planet.
Also at Natural History Museum
On now nearby
Nearby
Image credits
9
- Visions of NatureCourtesy of Natural History Museum
- Inside Aardman: Wallace & Gromit and FriendsCourtesy of Victoria and Albert Museum
- Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes ArtCourtesy of Victoria and Albert Museum
- Rising Voices: Contemporary Art from Asia, Australia and the PacificCourtesy of Victoria and Albert Museum
- Natural History MuseumDiliff / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
- Science MuseumChristine Matthews / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0
- Victoria and Albert MuseumDiliff / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
- Serpentine GalleryTxllxt TxllxT / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
- Saatchi GalleryAnthony O'Neil / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0