IST Marina Mall Interactive Aquarium
We turned a mall opening into a 10-metre aquarium filled with fish drawn by children's own hands.
İST MARİNA · MARCH 2018
Brief
March 2018. IST Marina Mall is opening and the management wants something beyond the standard ribbon-cutting ceremony: an experience that pulls children and families to the mall and stays in memory from day one. The target audience is clear — children and the families who come with them. But not a standard play area or a balloon corner; something digital and interactive that lets IST Marina say "there is something different here."
The heart of the brief was this: a scene where the child actively participates, sees something they created, and the family watches and takes photos. Not a one-off photo op or passive viewing — something the child themselves brought into being. And this experience had to scale to hundreds of children in a single day.
“A child connects not when they receive something, but when they see something from their own hand come alive in front of everyone.”
Insight
Most experiences set up for children at mall openings are consumption-oriented: grab a balloon, eat cotton candy, pose for a photo. The child takes something but creates nothing. Yet the moment a child truly connects is the moment they see something from their own hand grow, move, and be seen by others. That is the "I made this" moment — and that is the moment they show their family, capture on a phone, and talk about at home.
At the same time, an opening activation has to be a visual magnet. It should be noticeable from a distance, spark curiosity, and stop someone walking down the corridor to ask "what is that?" Colourful fish swimming across a giant screen — a scene that catches both the child's and the adult's eye, and once they get close, asks the question: "can I do that too?"
The Idea
We placed a 10×4 metre giant screen in the mall's opening area and set up colouring stations in front of it. On the screen, a living digital aquarium was running — seaweed, bubbles, the ocean floor. But there were no fish. The fish would be created by the children.
Children picked one of 20 different fish characters and coloured it with pencils. The coloured drawing was passed through a special scanner and within seconds the fish started swimming in the aquarium on the giant screen — in the child's own colours and patterns. Each new fish made the aquarium more alive, more colourful. By the end of the day, the aquarium held hundreds of unique fish created by hundreds of children — each one different, each one someone's own work. The family spotted their child's fish on the screen, took a photo, and the child pointed and said "that one is mine!"
10×4 Metre Giant Digital Aquarium Screen
A living digital aquarium ran on the 10×4 m screen set up in the mall's opening area — seaweed, bubbles, the ocean floor. A giant visual magnet that caught the eye of everyone walking down the corridor.
20 Unique Fish Characters
Children picked one of 20 different fish characters and coloured it with pencils. Every character was custom-designed — different shapes, fins, expressions. Even when two children chose the same template, each fish came out unique.
Scan and Instant Bring-to-Life
The coloured character was passed through a special scanner and within seconds started swimming in the aquarium on the giant screen — in the child's own colours and patterns. The moment from paper to digital — the moment the child said "I made that!"
Collective Aquarium — An Experience That Grew All Day
Each new fish made the aquarium more alive, more colourful. By day's end the screen held hundreds of unique fish created by hundreds of children. The experience was collective, not individual — everyone contributed to the same aquarium.
Execution
The Interactive Aquarium experience was built from scratch for this project. Software, hardware integration, character design and on-site operations were all produced by Harikalar. After the project's success the system was productised and is now one of Harikalar's rental catalogue products.
Scope
- Setup of the 10×4 m giant screen and design of the digital aquarium environment
- Illustration and design of 20 different fish characters
- Development of the scanning and bring-to-life software that transfers paper colouring to digital
- Design of colouring stations and material sourcing
- On-site operations and staff coordination to host 500 children a day
- Setup, operations and strike across the opening activation period
Team
- Director & Experience Design: Atilla Baybara
- Technology & Software: Utku Olcar
- Operations: Yiğit Sarı
- Client Relations: Şaban Yılmaz
- + Illustration, on-site setup & operations teams
Results
- 500+ children a day — hundreds of children and families joined the experience every day of the opening, contributing directly to the mall's launch-day traffic
- The "I made this" moment of paper-to-digital — seeing their own fish on the giant screen was the strongest proof of the shift from passive watching to active creation
- Organic photo and social sharing by families — families pointing at their child's fish on the screen naturally took photos and videos, giving the mall opening organic social media lift
- Project to product — the Interactive Aquarium system built from scratch for this project was productised after its success and added to Harikalar's rental catalogue
- A mall opening remembered beyond the ribbon-cutting — IST Marina's launch was remembered not as "they cut a ribbon" but as "the children's fish were swimming"
- Client
- İST Marina AVM
- Project
- AVM Açılış Aktivasyonu
- Date
- Mart 2018
- Location
- İST Marina AVM, İstanbul
- Format
- 10×4 m dev ekran + dijital akvaryum + boyama istasyonları + tarama sistemi
- Concept, Production & Operations
- Harikalar
- Project Lead
- Atilla Baybara
- Technology
- Utku Olcar
- Operations
- Yiğit Sarı
- Client Relations
- Şaban Yılmaz
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