The Monumento a la Revolución in Mexico City is an iconic symbol of the Mexican Revolution. However, one issue that became apparent was that many visitors were not aware of the monument’s internal spaces, which hold important pieces of its history and heritage.
The client contact us to solve this problem by creating a series of interactive installations that would guide visitors through the monument’s rich history and transform the experience into something more engaging and participatory.
A system that begins with a real-time updatable videowall at the entrance, followed by a comprehensive 3D architectural navigation of the monument’s structure and spaces. These digital installations not only enhanced the visitor’s understanding of the monument but also incorporated historical content and volumetric gesture-based interaction to make the experience immersive and reflective.
The Monumento a la Revolución is one of Mexico City’s most recognisable landmarks — an imposing neoclassical dome that has stood as a symbol of the Mexican Revolution since the early twentieth century. Despite its iconic status, the monument faced a common challenge for heritage sites of its kind: visitors arrived, admired the exterior, and left without ever discovering the rich historical spaces, artefacts, and narratives contained within.
ex1t.one was commissioned to solve this problem through a series of interactive digital installations that would guide visitors into the monument’s interior, communicate its history in an engaging and participatory way, and transform a passive sightseeing stop into a genuinely immersive cultural experience. The brief required close collaboration with cultural historians throughout to ensure that narrative integrity was preserved across every element of the installation design.
Monument to the Revolution
Table of Contents
A Multi-Installation Path Through Mexico City’s Revolutionary Heritage
The installation strategy was designed as a connected journey rather than a collection of isolated exhibits. From the moment visitors entered the monument, a sequence of interactive digital touchpoints drew them progressively deeper into the building’s spaces and history, each installation building on the one before to create a coherent narrative arc through the experience.
The journey began at the entrance with a real-time updatable videowall – a large-format display presenting historical content, current information, and orientation material that could be refreshed by the monument’s team without technical intervention. This gave the installation an evergreen quality, ensuring the content remained relevant and current throughout the project’s lifecycle rather than becoming fixed at installation.
From the entrance, visitors were guided through the monument’s interior via a 3D architectural navigation system that mapped the building’s structure and spaces in real time, allowing visitors to understand the full extent of what lay within and orient themselves within the monument’s complex layout. For a building whose interior had previously been largely invisible to the majority of visitors, this system alone represented a significant transformation in how the monument was experienced.
Interactive Ghost Imagery and Volumetric Gesture Control
Two of the most distinctive elements of the installation programme were the interactive ghost imagery and the volumetric gesture-controlled photo slideshow – both designed to bring visitors into direct, physical relationship with historical content rather than positioning them as passive observers.
The ghost imagery installation used transparent display technology to overlay historical figures and scenes onto the physical spaces of the monument in which they had originally occurred. Visitors encountered figures from the Mexican Revolution appearing within the actual architectural environment they had once inhabited – a deeply contextual form of storytelling that placed history within its own physical setting rather than abstracting it into a separate exhibition space.
The volumetric gesture-controlled photo slideshow allowed visitors to navigate through a curated archive of historical photography using physical movement – hands and body gestures interpreted by volumetric sensors – without any need to touch a screen or operate a conventional interface. This interaction model made the experience accessible to visitors of all ages and technical confidence levels whilst reinforcing the installation’s participatory, immersive character.
Collaboration With Cultural Historians: Preserving Narrative Integrity
Throughout the project, ex1t.one worked closely with cultural historians specialising in the Mexican Revolution and the monument’s own heritage. This collaboration was not incidental to the project but fundamental to it – the historical accuracy, tonal sensitivity, and curatorial rigour of the content were as important as the technical execution of the installations themselves.
Every piece of historical content displayed across the installation system was developed, reviewed, and approved in collaboration with the cultural advisory team. The narrative sequence, the selection of archival photography, the framing of historical events, and the language used to describe the monument’s significance were all subject to scholarly scrutiny at every stage of the production process.
This approach ensured that the interactive installations enhanced visitors’ understanding of a genuinely significant historical site rather than simplifying or sensationalising it – a distinction that matters enormously for cultural institutions whose credibility rests on the integrity of the stories they tell.
- Goals:
◦ Increase awareness of the monument’s spaces and history.
◦ Enhance visitor engagement and merchandising opportunities.
◦ Collaborated closely with cultural historians to preserve narrative integrity. - Production:
◦ Designed a multi-installation path, including:
• Interactive real-time wayfinder installation.
• Interactive ghost holography.
• Volumetric-controlled photo slideshow.
• Photo and information video wall. - Results:
◦ 25% increase in visitor traffic.
◦ 30% growth in social media followers.
◦ 20% boost in merchandising sales within three months.
Results: 25% More Visitors, 30% Social Media Growth and 20% Merchandising Uplift
The impact of the interactive installation programme at the Monumento a la Revolución was measurable across visitor, digital, and commercial dimensions within three months of launch.
Visitor traffic to the monument increased by 25%, a significant uplift for an established heritage site that had not undergone a major visitor experience intervention for many years. Social media followers grew by 30%, reflecting the shareable, visually compelling nature of the installations and the appetite among visitors to document and share their experience of the transformed monument. Merchandising sales increased by 20%, demonstrating a link between deeper visitor engagement and commercial activity on the site.
Taken together, these results confirmed what the installation programme had set out to prove: that making the interior of the Monumento a la Revolución visible, accessible, and genuinely engaging for visitors would not only enhance the cultural experience but also strengthen the monument’s position as a destination within Mexico City’s cultural landscape.
Related Interactive and Cultural Heritage Installations
Explore more interactive and cultural heritage installations from ex1t.one:
- InGoya Immersive Exhibition – Ultra-high-resolution immersive art experience featuring 200+ works by Francisco de Goya
- Commonwealth Games Perry’s Trail – Real-time motion capture interactive activation across Birmingham for Birmingham 2022
- Hexagon 270° Immersive Theatre – Real-time interactive showroom experience in the Netherlands
ex1t.one’s Approach to Cultural Heritage and Interactive Experience Design
ex1t.one works with cultural institutions, heritage sites, and public monuments to create interactive experiences that deepen visitor engagement while preserving the site’s historical and curatorial integrity. The Monumento a la Revolución project is a strong example of this approach in practice, a technically sophisticated installation programme developed in genuine partnership with cultural historians and delivered within the specific constraints and responsibilities of a nationally significant heritage site.
Our work for cultural institutions begins with listening to the curators, historians, and communities whose stories the installation must serve, and builds outward from there through technology choices, interaction design, and content development. The result is experiences that feel appropriate to their context, respectful of their subject matter, and genuinely enriching for the visitors who encounter them.
For further context on interactive design in heritage and museum environments, visit the Museums Association’s digital practice resources.