A Barco canvas for Brazilian modernism

Located in São Paulo’s iconic Conjunto Nacional on Avenida Paulista, Nubank Arte Lab is Brazil’s largest immersive art venue, a 2,700-square-meter cultural space where art and technology share the same canvas. Designed for large-scale exhibitions, interactive installations and sensory experiences, the venue brings together projection, LED, mirrors, sound and responsive technology to create experiences that extend far beyond the traditional gallery wall. At the heart of it all are two immersive rooms powered by Barco G-series projection, giving artists something very valuable: plenty of room for imagination.

Nubank Arte Lab was conceived by Aventura and Deeplab Project, with architecture by Jacobsen Arquitetura and AV design and integration by ON Projeções. Rather than building a venue around one exhibition, the team envisioned a versatile cultural platform that could continually transform to welcome exhibitions, digital art, performances and corporate events.

Its opening exhibition, O Brasil de Tarsila, does exactly that. Around 40 works by Brazilian Modernist Tarsila do Amaral are reinterpreted across more than ten environments, combining projection, interaction, scenography, an original soundtrack and sensory effects. The result invites visitors to experience familiar artwork from a completely new perspective.

Beyond its projection rooms, the venue includes an 84-square-meter transparent LED façade, a volumetric LED sculpture with 8,352 individually addressable points, a mirrored infinity room, digital signage and spaces for corporate events.

Creating an immersive venue on this scale came with a demanding brief.

The two main immersive rooms each span 207 square meters and measure 23 by 9 meters, with projection covering three walls and the floor. ON needed to achieve at least 150 lux while maintaining strong contrast and consistent color across large, blended images. Dark content needed to retain its depth, while brighter scenes had to remain vivid rather than wash out.

But image quality was only part of the equation. The rooms also had to be flexible enough to move from one creative concept to the next. Instead of engineering a system around a single show, ON needed a reliable AV platform that could be recalibrated and remapped as exhibitions changed. 

To transform the two immersive rooms into floor-to-wall digital canvases, ON Projeções designed the projection setup around 29 Barco laser phosphor projectors. Eighteen G50-W6 units bring the walls to life, while eleven higher-output G62-W9 projectors take care of the floors. Two additional projectors are kept as operational spares, helping safeguard continuity in a venue designed for regular use.

DLP technology was selected for its combination of brightness, black levels and contrast, an important consideration for artwork that can shift from deep, dark scenes to vivid bursts of color. Combined with the carefully selected gray finish of the projection surfaces, the system helps preserve contrast and visual depth across the rooms.

The projectors work together as one continuous visual canvas. Their compact form factor gives the installation team more freedom when positioning projectors throughout the immersive rooms, while helping keep the technology discreet so the art can take center stage. That becomes especially valuable in a permanent venue where the projection infrastructure needs to support many different creative ideas over time, rather than being optimized for one show and left unchanged.

“Choosing the right technology was decisive. That is why we partnered with Barco, a global reference in projection,” says Hugo Rodrigues, CEO at ON Projeções. “With daily visitors, the space needed a technology capable of delivering brightness, precision and reliability with no margin for error. This choice ensures that standard in every session.”

The result is a venue designed to keep reinventing itself. Nubank Arte Lab opened its doors in 2026 with immersive experiences that bring Brazilian art, digital creativity and technology together in new ways.

However, that technology isn't tied to a single moment. Just five weeks after opening, the venue had already added another experience, Jornada Muti Randolph + MAOTIK. Its programmable, reconfigurable infrastructure gives Nubank Arte Lab the freedom to keep welcoming new artists, stories and ideas.

The projectors may provide the canvas, but what fills it can keep changing. And in a space dedicated to creativity, that's exactly the point.