Company behind NY Empire State Building Sells to Firm Focused on Metaverse & Immersive Experiences

The Acquisition of Squint/Opera Doubles Journey’s Scale Worldwide With Studios in London, New York and Dubai 

Journey, an innovation and design agency, announced the addition of Squint/Opera, a leading creative agency which bridges the worlds of architecture, design, media, and technology to produce compelling narrative driven immersive experiences in physical and virtual worlds. Squint/Opera’s expertise combined with Journey’s industry-leading capabilities in physical, spatial voice, gaming and metaverse design provides a unique combination of talent focused on the creation of new 3D experiences.

Squint/Opera has completed numerous physical immersive projects globally, notably the Observatory at The Empire State Building, a top-to-bottom reimagining of the World’s Most Famous Building punctuated by immersive media experiences where the streets of 1930s New York come to life, King Kong ducks from biplanes, and the building is constructed around you. Other large-scale projects include the soon-to-open Oman Across Ages Museum in Oman, Bordeaux wine museum, and the V&A Videogames exhibition in London.

“The opportunity to join Journey was momentous,” said Julius Coke, CEO of Squint/Opera. “Over the last few years Squint has experienced significant growth, as the demand for immersive 3D experiences grows and new platforms and technologies enable a new level of creativity tapping into our storytelling, virtual production and creative media skills.

In addition, Squint/Opera has created virtual worlds and digital experiences in collaboration with some of the leading architecture practices in the world, for example Toyota Woven City with the Bjarke Ingels Group, and Hot Heart with Carlo Ratti Associati. Squint/Opera is a leader in using Unreal Engine, part of Epic Games, to create large-scale virtual twins of future cities, as well as employing Virtual Production techniques to create filmic visions of places and industries, such as the Hospital of the Future. Squint/Opera are pioneers in the creation of B2B and enterprise virtual worlds, applying a wide variety of 3D design techniques to real-world projects.

“Creating the next chapter in the 3D end customer journey requires integrated teams working across traditionally siloed disciplines,” said Andy Zimmerman, CEO of Journey,

“With the addition of Squint/Opera, Journey is the first agency to bring these diverse skills and talents together at a global scale, to engage with the world’s biggest brands and most ambitious projects.”  

The acquisition of Squint/Opera follows Journey’s recent series of acquisitions, including The Devhouse Agency, announced on October 24th.