Video description: A visitor walks down a corridor of interactive lighting that responds to their presence, and past a couple watching a film on a large digital display. Another visitor places an RFID-enabled object onto a sensor that glows and begins a film explaining the science behind Gore's materials. Other visitors touch capacitive sensors to trigger embedded lighting that highlights groupings of products within a wall covered with displayed products.
W. L. Gore & Associates
Best known for their signature product GORE-TEX, W. L. Gore & Associates is a global materials science company dedicated to discovery, product innovation, and improving lives. Their Capabilities Center in Newark, Delaware, showcases the company’s heritage to partners, customers, and visitors. Bluecadet, with architectural partner Digsau, created a "museum for the brand" featuring a series of interactive experiences that highlight Gore’s capabilities, culture, and innovation.
Lobby and Entrance
A custom, authentic brand experience
The lobby embodies Gore’s brand and mission with custom furnishings, screens inspired by the Eames film “Powers of 10,” to showcase global reach, and ornamental panels evoking material science. Custom seating and a cafe offer spaces for Associates, partners, and visitors to intermingle, embodying the promise: Together, improving life.
Video description: A sweeping interior view of the Gore Capabilities Center, showing a bespoke multi-screen wall display and a light-filled space with a large hanging sculpture.
A Reactive Hallway
An experiential connecting space
Visitors enter through a sculptural corridor lined with custom-milled panels featuring integrated, motion-triggered lighting elements. This passageway leads into the large central exhibition space, subtly introducing themes, materials, and visual effects that recur throughout the Capabilities Center.
Video description: A person in a vibrant blue shirt walks down a modern hallway with a wooden accent wall and sleek glass partitions.
Advanced Materials Spiral
Tactile engagement brings objects to life
This immersive theater offers hands-on experiences with Gore product samples. Featuring dynamic sound and lighting, a curved projection screen, and retractable mesh panels, the spiral space accommodates immersive experiences and group events.
Video description: Visitors stand in front of a guide demonstrating with a capacitive object. The guide places the object on an illuminated panel, which triggers large projections on an adjacent screen, with the text "Up to 10x stronger."
When placed on the central RFID-enabled table, samples trigger animated videos explaining their properties and capabilities. Gore Associates provide personalized presentations, deepening visitors' understanding of the science behind their innovations.
Video description: A stylized beating heart is shown with a superimposed Conformable Thoracic Stent Graft. The different components of the object are then shown in a diagram.
Team Stories
A film showcasing collaborative innovations
Produced, shot, and edited by Bluecadet, this film showcases the range of Gore innovations. From documenting Gore-Tex ski jackets in Vancouver to a factory in West Virginia, it demonstrates the applications, partners, and adaptability of Gore technology. The film plays on a 16-foot screen, with ambient content serving as a dramatic backdrop for events and presentations in the Capabilities Center.
Video description: Visitors are shown watching a screen displaying individuals in different environments — e.g., a factory, an assembly line, and the ski slopes.
In the film, Gore partners appear in an array of environments that reflect their respective industries. Intended to feel inviting and accessible, their interviews were intentionally framed and shot at “visitor scale,” and they offer a behind-the-scenes glimpse into spaces that the public may not typically get to see.
Product Wall
Interactive storytelling activated by touch
From apparel to aerospace, an expansive floor-to-ceiling display of 70 product samples visualizes the scale and scope of Gore’s work. The product wall identifies each industry with capacitive text that activates dynamic light trails to highlight related products when touched.
Video description: Visitors approach and touch an object wall that illuminates with “light trails” when touched
Performance Pods
Labs, revealed
Combining digital media and physical demonstrations, mobile “laboratories” reveal Gore’s development process, showing visitors how products are ensured to perform as promised.
Video description: Visitors look and interact with each other in front of large screens.
For selected products, Bluecadet shot custom macrophotography, to capture details in high definition and depth.
Community & Culture
Creating personal connections
Gore is defined not just by their products, but by their people. To showcase what makes working at Gore special, Bluecadet produced four videos capturing the distinct talents and diverse perspectives of Gore Associates. Full-scale video portraits, traditional photography, and dynamic graphics help visitors feel a personal connection to the company.
Video description: A visitor walks down a corridor past two other visitors watching a screen surrounded by illuminated portraits.
Awards
Association of Briefing Program Managers (ABPM)
Winner of the ABPM's World Class Briefing Center Award, 2022
Creative Partners
DIGSAU
Diversified
Taylor Group
Becker & Frondorf
Anon Design
W. L. Gore & Associates Capabilities Center TeamBluecadet is a deeply collaborative partner. Throughout this project, they challenged our assumptions and pushed us to identify true north: the ultimate vision of the new Capabilities center. Bluecadet was the compass guiding us towards that vision along the two-year journey from concept to completion, they delivered in a way that exceeded our expectations and has already delighted thousands of visitors.
Explore More
Video description: A large digital display in the lobby animates with colored patterns and imagery from famous broadcasts. Separately, a visitor interacts with a touchwall showcasing the NAB's Broadcasting Hall of Fame, including illustrations and names of famous broadcasts and broadcasters.
Video description: Visitors in a museum gallery look at displays of objects next to a long digital screen. A Visitor steps into a circle of projected light and a large sculpture resembling an audio cone reacts and illuminates in front of them. A visitor types into an interactive and makes a poem with an AI agent; a long curving digital screen extends up over and above them that shows pieces of paper with other visitor-created poems on them floating upwards.