Pneuhaus Builds a Walk-In Camera With 221 Views and No Screens

Compound Camera No.3 projects 221 simultaneous views of the outside world onto walls you can press with your hands — and not one of them comes from a digital screen. Rhode Island studio Pneuhaus designed the inflatable pavilion as a camera you walk into, and it premiered at MODE Fest in Minneapolis from September 18 to 20, 2026.

The installation covers more than 700 square feet and holds 221 camera obscura cells. Each cell projects the surrounding environment onto the pavilion's translucent inner surface. The subject matter is simply whatever happens to be outside — familiar scenery, given an unusually elaborate viewing room.

From the outside, the pavilion reads like oversized protective packaging: a white inflated shell covered in circular dimples, with a low entrance extending from the taller main volume. Each small lens sits inside its own depression. Even before you grasp the mechanics, that repeating pattern hints the surface has a job beyond holding air in.

How does an inflatable room work as a camera?

Each cell contains a glass double-convex lens, according to the studio's project details published by designboom. The structure combines those lenses with urethane-coated nylon and air. An internal baffle layer separates and aligns the inner and outer membranes, and light entering through the lenses forms images on the inner surface. Repeated across the pavilion, the arrangement produces a cluster of neighboring views, each with its own frame and perspective.

Pneuhaus takes its cue from a dragonfly's compound eye, arranging lenses along complex curves to gather multiple perspectives at once. The studio frames the connection as an invitation to imagine another way of seeing rather than a literal simulation of insect vision. Distributing the views around a room gives your attention several places to go — you decide where to look.

The touch interaction gives that wandering attention something practical to do. Pressing the flexible membrane lets visitors adjust the focus for different distances, according to Pneuhaus. Softness is the mechanism: a rigid projection surface would remove that control entirely. The thing you touch is also the place where you see the result.

What does it change for how we look at images?

In Lachlan Turczan's photographs of the interior, patches of blue sky and clouds repeat across the ceiling, while trees and buildings appear in other cells. Some scenes hang upside down. The visible edges between frames make the interior read as a room full of individual pictures, and those seams matter — they let you notice how the same surroundings shift from one optical compartment to the next.

The pavilion isn't an argument against digital art. A screen can do plenty this room can't, and an inflatable camera is hardly a replacement for the phone in your pocket. Its value is more specific: it gives image-making a physical scale, making the relationship between a lens, a surface, and a scene something people can explore with their bodies and hands.

Pneuhaus lists the installation for rental inquiries, aiming it at festivals, exhibitions, and temporary public experiences. That fits a project whose appeal depends on entering it. A shared room also leaves space for people to notice different things — the person beside you might be studying a building while you're trying to sharpen a patch of leaves.

The ordinariness of the subject matter is part of the draw. A tree, a cloud, or a passerby supplies enough visual interest once the viewing apparatus makes you curious. For a pavilion with 221 views, its most engaging control could turn out to be one gentle push against a wall.