SELIDER Morelia Headquarters
Virtual environment design
Visual storytelling
Graphic design
Worldbuilding
This is a tile-based map designed for the virtual headquarters and facilities of the youth leadership organization SELIDER Morelia. In these unprecedented times, SELIDER Morelia had to indefinitely suspend all kinds of in-person activities and opt for virtual options to carry on with their projects and events. These virtual headquarters are currently hosted on the remote-social platform Gather.
The design of the main building is inspired by the colonial architecture characteristic of the city of Morelia, the city in which the organization is located. Both the interior and exterior of the building use pink quarry on the interior walls and on the facade. The colors and materials used in the headquarters bring elements from the real world to a virtual space to take advantage of the participant's previous association of these elements to past projects and events. This design allows the participants to feel comfortable when visiting this world that, despite being something completely new to them, includes elements from places they are already used to.
Morelia architectural reference
The scale of the main building allows participants to have a better understanding of the distribution of space inside the building, while at the same time allowing an agile movement towards the different rooms of the building. People who visit this world will intuitively know where to go and how to locate themselves in this space even when it is completely is new to them.
Headquarters exterior
When entering through the main entrance, the participants arrive at the reception, where there are registration tables where participants who are arriving to an event will be able to complete their registration with the help of a staff member. In the center of the room there's a main staircase which leads to the upper floor.
Reception
Going through the gates located on the sides of the staircase, the participants arrive at the main hall, where there are tables and sofas to propitiate networking and have conversations after activities and conferences.
Main hall
Going through the doors on the sides of the main hall, there are 2 rooms in parallel where there are sponsor booths and rest areas.
Sponsor booths and rest areas
Going through the large door at the back of the main hall is the auditorium, where conferences and other activities are held during events. There is also the possibility of integrating a Google Meet or Zoom call depending on what suits the speaker and the needs of the conference.
Auditorium
When going up to the top floor through the reception stairs, you will find the main offices. This space is designed to promote cross-pollination between the different areas of the organization, in addition to having spaces for collaboration and recreation. For this project, a new iconography was developed to represent graphically the 4 main areas of the organization: Marketing and Social Media, Logistics and Activities, Finance and Sponsorships, and Registration. Each one has its corresponding color and icon. A new tileset was designed to customize and decorate the space.
Custom office tileset
In the offices, each of the organization's areas have a cubicle in which the area meetings are held. The cubicles have interactive materials such as whiteboards and collaborative boards (only visible in the virtual world). At the back of the offices there is a meeting room where the recurring meetings of the organization are held.
Main offices
On the lower sides of the offices there are two gates that in parallel lead to extra meeting rooms designed to carry out trainings and integration activities.
Meeting rooms
Going through the gate located at the bottom of the offices, you can go out to a balcony that allows you to use the spotlight function and thus be able to speak to all the people in the exterior of the headquarters.
At the back of the offices, on the sides of the organization-wide meeting space, there are two doors. Going though those two doors there are the private offices of the members of the board of coordinators. You can have individual meetings at the tables designated for each of the coordinators or have group meetings at the large table in the middle of the room.
Office of the board of coordinators
On the sides of the room, there are 2 portals that lead to a secret bunker located underground, below the headquarters. This bunker is intended to facilitate movement between different areas of the headquarters during events. This place is also designed for the volunteers and staff to rest and prepare for when they have to go out for an activity of the event. Hidden portals allow access to the bunker from different rooms of the building, keeping the bunker secret from the people who are not part of the organization.
Bunker
This is just the main building of a Gather space that has expanded over the past months by featuring several new places to explore and visit. The largest expansion so far has been designed for the SELIDER Camp. To learn more about this expansion, click here.
This project would not have been possible without the help of SELIDER Morelia volunteers, organizers and board of coordinators.
Note:
These maps were designed using parts of Gather's public tiles. Throughout the creative process, changes and adjustments were made to the tilesets to meet the needs of the project.