The archive · Design & Visual · Marketing decision · 2025
Boehringer Ingelheim stages messy AR homes to show schizophrenia beyond 'stable'
In design-obsessed Milan, Boehringer Ingelheim rebuilt patients' messy homes; AR let visitors experience schizophrenia's hidden hallucinations and chaos.
Boehringer Ingelheim
What it had to solve
Schizophrenia's neglected symptoms — hallucinations, thinking problems and frustration — disrupt daily life even when patients seem 'stable'. Boehringer Ingelheim wanted providers and caregivers to recognize the total impact of the disorder and to rethink how it is managed.
How it works
Treating schizophrenia usually focuses on getting patients 'stable' — delusions and hallucinations under control — yet cognitive and negative symptoms keep wrecking their daily lives. Boehringer Ingelheim wanted providers and caregivers to recognize the full disorder, and chose Milan, of all cities, to make the point.
Milan is world-famous for elegant design, so the team deliberately did the opposite: in the centre of town they recreated the real, messy spaces of people living with schizophrenia. Walking through those rooms, visitors used augmented reality to discover hallucinations, thinking problems and frustrations that medical charts never show.
The audience was not just the public but the clinicians and caregivers whose view of the disease decides how it is managed. By making the neglected symptoms physically present, the installation aimed to inspire a new mindset for treating schizophrenia; the work is archived in D&AD's awards archive.
Why it lands
- Design-obsessed Milan made 'the opposite of elegant' the whole idea: disorder itself became the subject of an installation in a city famous for order and beauty.
- Recreating real homes rather than abstract visuals grounded the experience in the actual lives of people with schizophrenia.
- Augmented reality delivered what no consultation can: the hallucinations and chaotic thinking that patients still live with even when they appear stable.
What it did
The installation made schizophrenia's invisible burden physically present for the clinicians and caregivers who decide how it is treated, aiming to inspire a new management mindset; the work is archived in D&AD's awards archive under Spatial Design.
What you can take
To change how experts manage a condition, do not describe the patient's inner chaos — build a space they can walk through and make invisible symptoms visible.
Since then
The installation is archived in D&AD's awards archive as Spatial Design, an example of using place and augmented reality to change how a disorder is understood and managed.
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