Architecture / Exhibits / Immersive Environments / Digital Experiences

Frisco Nature Center

Frisco, Texas2025 · Competition win / Design development

Nature center rendering with a FloraDex digital display, natural-history exhibits, and prairie planting. — Rendering: digital interpretation sits alongside physical exhibits.

Nature center rendering with a bison exhibit, a central tree, tall digital displays, and an upper gallery. — Rendering: the Blackland Prairie gallery brings exhibits and interior space together.

Nature center lobby rendering with reception, a tall digital waterfall, timber ceilings, and a central tree. — Rendering: arrival connects reception, exhibits, and immersive media.

Rendering of the upper gallery looking down to the prairie exhibits and central tree. — Rendering: exhibits connect across two levels.

Rendering of a curved prairie timeline display with integrated seating. — Rendering: the prairie story unfolds along a curved interpretive wall.

Rendering of a large mosasaur digital wall with visitors seated on timber benches. — Rendering: a large-format digital wall introduces a different scale of discovery.

Rendering of an immersive beaver habitat experience with a curved enclosure and woodland imagery. — Rendering: an immersive encounter with a beaver habitat.

Interior concept rendering with wraparound projections of birds in flight surrounding visitors. — Immersive concept: visitors are surrounded by birds in flight.

Interior concept rendering of a domed room filled with forest projections. — Immersive concept: a forest environment fills the projection dome.

Night trail rendering with visitors surrounded by luminous meadow and woodland projections. — Rendering: a night trail experience uses light and media to change the atmosphere.

Rendering of the Texas Fish exhibit with aquatic displays and a large digital wall. — Rendering: Texas waterways connect live habitats and digital interpretation.

Live-animal gallery concept with planted habitat displays, an aquarium, and seating. — Habitat concept: live-animal displays within the visitor experience.

Rendering of a Texas aquatic life exhibit with a large fish tank and planted habitat. — Habitat concept: a closer view of Texas aquatic life.

Rendering of pollinator exhibits with a planted wall, digital displays, and visitors. — Rendering: pollinators and urban nature become subjects for close observation.

Rendering of a freestanding bird and bat information station with radial display panels. — Rendering: bird and bat calls create another way to explore local wildlife.

Rendering of an upper gallery with night-sky displays explaining light pollution. — Rendering: light pollution and the night sky become part of the habitat story.

Rendering of visitors beside a blue motion-reactive weather display in the main corridor. — Rendering: a motion-reactive weather station connects movement and learning.

Woodland trail concept rendering with visitors beside a digital interpretation kiosk. — Trail concept: interpretation continues into the landscape.

Rendering of a trail-side interactive kiosk with native planting and visitors. — Trail concept: a stopping point for observing native plants and habitats.

Rendering of a pollinator exhibit with an illuminated honeycomb wall, specimen table, and visitors. — Rendering: pollinator specimens and honeycomb displays invite close observation.

Rendering of a bird migration viewer with visitors seated around a cylindrical projection and grass-like seating. — Rendering: a shared encounter with flight and migration.

Frisco Nature Center level 1 exhibit floor plan with color-coded visitor zones and exhibit tags. — Level 1 exhibit floor plan: welcome, immersive media, prairie, waterways, and pollinators.

Frisco Nature Center level 2 exhibit floor plan with color-coded visitor zones and exhibit tags. — Level 2 exhibit floor plan: sky and habitat awareness.

Competition animation

The competition animation helped communicate the proposal for the winning 2025 submission.

A competition-winning proposal for a nature center that connects interior space, exhibits, and immersive technology. Prairie, waterways, pollinators, and the sky become linked experiences for discovering the natural world in Frisco.

My contribution

I directed the interior design, exhibit design, and immersive technology approach for the proposal that won the 2025 competition. My work brought spatial character, interpretive exhibits, and digital experiences into one visitor journey. The project is currently in design development.

How can a nature center turn observation into an experience of discovery?

Interior space as part of the exhibit

The prairie gallery is the spatial heart of the experience. A central tree, physical specimens, planting, and digital displays give visitors different scales of encounter, with the upper gallery offering another perspective on the same story.

Media that changes the encounter

Immersive environments extend the reach of the physical exhibits. Flight, forest, night trails, and weather offer ways to shift atmosphere and scale, while larger digital walls create shared moments within the visitor route.

Habitats, up close

Waterways, pollinators, birds, and the Blackland Prairie provide a framework for the exhibits. Live habitats, tactile interpretation, and media are considered together, allowing visitors to move between close observation and a wider environmental story.

Discovery beyond the building

Trail-side interpretation extends the learning experience outdoors. Interactive stopping points encourage visitors to connect the center’s exhibits with the plants, habitats, and conditions around them.

A connected visitor journey

The exhibit plans organize the ground level around welcome, immersive media, prairie, waterways, and pollinators. The upper level continues into sky and habitat awareness, linking individual exhibits into a route through the center.

Collaboration & credits

Michael Zepeda — Interior design direction, exhibit design, and immersive technology.
Architecture and project team: PBK.
Competition-winning proposal, 2025. Current phase: design development.

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