jangled nerves

Steel, from every angle you can think of. The new 360° panorama is like a journey through the universe and the atomic structures of different kinds of innovative steel. Here, visitors to the centre in Duisburg, north of Dusseldorf, are plunged into the fascinating world of thyssenkrupp Steel Europe. How better to prepare people for a visit to the steel factory than to entice them through space and media, through an installation that is both emotionally appealing and informative.

Examples that make the sheer scope of steel so tangible as an amazing high-tech material include an ancient iron meteorite (no less than 4 billion years old), a race-winning luge (with runners made from advanced steel produced in Duisburg), a fascinating steel drum and innovative noise-protecting metal sheets, ready to tap on, touch and try out.

Inside the room, everything is set up like a futuristic Star Trek steel holodeck. Sequences filmed by drones give the visitors a panorama of places that are otherwise simply too perilous to visit themselves, offering views the likes of which they will never have seen before: heaps of ore, the insides of huge furnaces, rows of manual workers dressed in protective silver overalls as they carefully process red-hot iron ore, slabs of orange-glowing processed metal sliding through huge rolls only to emerge on the other side next to some kind of ultra-efficient safety component for an automobile. To take visitors through the journey, the sequences are accompanied by the voices of the actual people who work at thyssenkrupp.