This new interactive space, formerly Margaret Carnegie’s bedroom, offers a unique experience: the ability to view Cooper Hewitt’s extraordinary collection of wallcoverings as never before.

Using the Pen, you can select wallpapers from the Museum’s permanent collection and see them projected on the walls from floor to ceiling—for a vibrant, impactful, immersive experience. You can even play designer by creating your own designs, or just stand back and watch as the wallpapers unfold across the room.

More than just entertainment, the Immersion Room provides the first opportunity to discover Cooper Hewitt’s wallcoverings as they were intended to be viewed.

To complement the experience, a number of wallpapers are accompanied by audio clips. When you select one of these designs, an audio recording plays through speakers in the room, giving you additional information about that particular design or designer.

The experience is yet another way the new Cooper Hewitt is remaining true to the vision of its founders, Sarah and Eleanor Hewitt, who intended it as “a practical working laboratory,” where students and designers could be inspired by actual objects. Their 1897 vision of a museum and collection “for anyone who wanted to use it as a place to work and learn” seems radical, even by today’s standards, but it has guided the transformation of Cooper Hewitt into a design museum for the 21st century.