Meet our Customers - Visualization Center C - Research, wonder, and the roots of Storyvoxel
In the heart of Norrköping's historic industrial landscape sits one of the world's most remarkable homes for visualization. Visualization Center C brings together state-of-the-art research and vivid public experiences under one roof and it is where Storyvoxel's own story began.
A rare blend of research and public wonder
Opened in 2010, and built on a concept first sketched by professor Anders Ynnerman in 1999, Visualization Center C is an unusual mix of research arena and public science centre. Across several floors of restored 19th-century factory buildings, visitors move through interactive exhibitions, a VR theatre, conference spaces, and research labs. At its heart is one of the finest stereoscopic fulldome theatres in the world, hosting everything from cinematic shows to live, interactive real-time presentations.
Its award-winning production department creates fulldome shows seen far beyond Norrköping, and the center is a driving partner behind OpenSpace, the open-source software used to visualise the known universe. The guiding philosophy even has a name: exploranation, exploration and explanation combined, the belief that people understand the world best when they can investigate it for themselves. Admission to the exhibitions is free, and the center has welcomed more than 1.5 million visitors. Today, it is led by CEO Lisa Lindgren.
Lisa Lindgren, CEO in the dome theatre.
A place for everyone
The doors are open to researchers and professional visitors, families and the wider public, and school children by the class. Alongside its research labs, testbeds and exhibitions, the center runs a rich programme of public activities, teaching everything from the scale of the universe to how to code a robot, so curiosity always has somewhere to go.
Where Storyvoxel began
Storyvoxel's roots run straight through this building. The company was spun off from the center's visualization environment and today the relationship has come full circle: Storyvoxel is now one of its suppliers. The center features more than 10 interactive exhibits built by Storyvoxel, experiences that let visitors explore real scientific data directly.
Exploring what's real
These exhibits turn captured scientific data into something anyone can navigate. Visitors can peel back the layers of the human body in 3D on an interactive table, or take a virtual journey inside an Egyptian mummy moving past static images to explore structure, detail, and context on their own terms. It is the same principle the center itself is built on: real data, made explorable, without reducing its complexity.
“There is something truly special in seeing Storyvoxel grow out of our own environment, born from the same curiosity, the same research foundation, and the same ambition to make complex knowledge accessible. Today, we continue to evolve together, developing research-based methods that not only bring science closer to people, but also push the entire field of visual learning and communication forward”
Real data in an AI era
That grounding matters more than ever. As generative AI makes convincing imagery cheap and instant, experiences built on what has actually been scanned, measured, and observed carry a different kind of credibility. At Visualization Center C, visitors aren't looking at an approximation, they're exploring what is really there.
“We share a strong belief in the value of what is real. In a time where facts under threat and almost anything can be generated instantly, it becomes more important than ever to build understanding on data that has actually been measured, observed, and explored. Together, we create experiences where people don’t just look, they explore, learn, and help shape the next generation of science communication”
Looking into the future
What started here continues here. Rooted in the center's own story, Storyvoxel looks forward to helping Visualization Center C keep doing what it does best turning real scientific data into experiences people can explore for themselves.
The direction ahead is shared. As visualization technology advances and new datasets become available, the ambition stays constant: to make complex reality explorable, without reducing it. And in a world where AI can generate almost anything, experiences grounded in what has actually been measured, scanned, and observed only grow more valuable. That is the future both the center and Storyvoxel are building toward where curiosity meets real data, and understanding follows.
