The archive · Public & Social · Product decision · 2022
Anne Frank House turns its hidden-annex bookcase into an AR portal to persecuted lives
Eighty years after Anne Frank hid behind it, the bookcase opens as an AR doorway into her rooms and the rooms of four young people facing persecution today.
Anne Frank House
What it had to solve
In 1942 Anne Frank moved into a secret annex concealed by a custom-built bookcase. Eighty years later, with antisemitism, racism and inequality growing, the Anne Frank House wanted to fight discrimination through education rather than lectures.
How it works
In 1942 Anne Frank moved into a secret annex in Amsterdam, concealed from the world by a custom-built bookcase. Eighty years later antisemitism, racism and inequality were growing again, and the question was how to make a story that belongs to history speak to the present.
The Anne Frank House, with INNOCEAN Worldwide Europe and Media.Monks, turned the bookcase itself into the answer: an AR app that serves as a portal. Users rotate the iconic object to open it and step inside true-to-life rooms — not only Anne Frank's, but those of four young people suffering modern-day persecution, whose stories are told through personal objects and audio testimonials.
The Bookcase For Tolerance aimed to fight discrimination through education. Instead of narrating intolerance, the experience puts users inside its consequences, connecting one girl's hiding place in 1942 to four people facing persecution today.
The work earned a D&AD Pencil in Experiential (D&AD 2022) and remains in the D&AD awards archive as a reference for turning a heritage icon into an educational portal.
Why it lands
- The bookcase is the one object every visitor already knows, so the interface carries the story before a single word is spoken.
- Stepping inside true-to-life rooms makes Anne Frank's hiding a space the user occupies rather than a fact to recall.
- Pairing her story with four young people persecuted today stops tolerance from being a past-tense lesson.
- Personal objects and first-person audio let the protagonists tell their own stories instead of being narrated over.
What it did
The 1942 icon stopped being a history lesson and became a lens on the present: the same portal that opens Anne Frank's annex opens four contemporary stories of persecution, so tolerance is walked through rather than told. The Bookcase For Tolerance earned a D&AD Pencil in Experiential (D&AD 2022) and stays in D&AD's archive as a reference for museum-led civic education.
What you can take
An icon is an invitation: when the object everyone recognises becomes the interface, audiences walk into a hard subject instead of being told about it.
Since then
The app translated an object that symbolises hiding into a doorway for looking outward, and the campaign's category was Experiential: Activation & Participation in the D&AD archive. The Anne Frank House keeps the experience as an education tool that asks users to step into the annex and into contemporary stories of persecution, and D&AD 2022 recognised the work with a Pencil.
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