Halfway down Fifth Avenue in West Reading sits a building that doesn’t quite blend in.
Those driving by will notice a large sign with no letters, only a symbol like a crop circle.
Its façade is ivy cascading down ionized wire grates, atop a symmetric flow of concrete and glass.
On its side, a mural depicts a napping blue cartoon monster that looks like it would be at home among the cast of “Where the Wild Things Are.”
Easily missed amid the visual statement is a door marked plainly with the words: Neo-Pangea.
“When you’re driving by, you’re kind of like, ‘Oh, that’s cool, what is that company?’” said Matthew Tucker, project manager at NeoPangea. “But once you step inside that building, it truly is remarkable what’s happening.”
Inside NeoPangea
The building hosts NeoPangea’s headquarters and “Laboratory of Wonder,” a place that exists “at the intersection of surprise and curiosity,” according to the company’s website.
Inside, scenes from novels, movies and historic moments are brought to lifelike detail, using custom fabrication and the company’s own digital design expertise.
Instead of meeting rooms, workers hold Zoom conferences in capsules modeled like a Monty Python castle or a room in the International Space Station.
Pods that depict concepts are central features at NeoPangea, a design and marketing firm at 215 S. Fifth Ave., West Reading. (BILL UHRICH/MEDIANEWS GROUP)
“We have a room that is Indiana Jones themed, there’s a talisman that when you move it, it turns lights on and off,” Tucker said. “There’s a 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea submarine pod, which is all polished copper and brass, with truly one-of-a-kind artifacts that are handmade, that look like we’ve captured mermaids in bottles.”
Sarah Schafer, left, design intern, and Sarah Trafford, senior experience designer, work inside a pod that resembles the set of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea at NeoPangea, a design and marketing firm at 215 S. Fifth Ave., West Reading. (BILL UHRICH/MEDIANEWS GROUP)
Like an intersection, the lab serves cross purposes: it’s a dreamscape where NeoPangea’s designers freely sow the fruits of their creative labor.
It’s also a carefully curated statement of just how vastly NeoPangea’s professional capabilities extend.
“We capture the mystery and the ethos of NeoPangea in those moments,” Tucker said of the lab’s decor. “We try to capture the moment of creating a story in those rooms, to show how dedicated we are to showing unique stories. Really, we’re storytellers.”
What is NeoPangea?
NeoPangea, which recently celebrated its 21st anniversary in its birthplace of West Reading, is a digital design, marketing and production studio. They specialize in experiential media, media designed to immerse the audience using tools like interactive displays or augmented and virtual reality.
“We’re a creative partner to entertainment brands, museums and partners across consumer product goods, retail, augmented reality,” Tucker said. “There’s quite a lot that we do.”
Their projects combine elements of design, storytelling and custom fabrication — everything from digital ads and video games to large-scale interactive displays and exhibits.
NeoPangea’s clientele includes household names, like National Geographic, Nickelodeon and Paramount+, as well as more localized interests, like the Berks History Center.
“We’re a team of 30 to 40 at any given time based on that project scope,” Tucker said.
He said brands look to the company for its ethos as storytellers capable of weaving unique solutions and technology experts at the forefront of experiential media.
“Over the years, we’ve become more entrenched in what’s happening in technology,” Tucker said. “We have a lot of collaborators abroad that view us as experts, like you would assume you would only be able to find in a top five market or Silicon Valley.”
Founder Brett Bagenstose started NeoPangea in 2005 in his spare bedroom.
He based the company’s name around the Latin for “new” and the idea that the Earth once contained a single, unified continent, called Pangea.
NeoPangea signifies Bagenstose’s belief that the internet has created a digital “continent” where people can come together to wonder, explore and, most importantly, play, according to the company’s website.
Playful approach to creating
That playful element is apparent in NeoPangea’s approach to its projects.
One of the company’s projects for Paramount+ turned a Times Square billboard into a fully 3D-model of a starship in celebration of the final season of “Star Trek: Picard.” The starship seems to peek out of the borders of the display as it hovers to a stop above the entrance of the Marriot Marquis.
Its work with National Geographic includes “Becoming Jane,” a traveling, multimedia exhibition that transforms Jane Goodall’s memoirs into an interactive exhibit, and “Make Mars Home,” an alternate reality experience that recruited prospective Mars colonists in a mock mission to the planet, using an interactive website, virtual reality simulations and more.
The company’s local efforts are also notable. At the Reading Public Museum, NeoPangea digitally resurrected Nefrina, a 2,500-year-old mummy, who springs to life in a holographic display to share her story with visitors.
NeoPangea has also been tapped for a large-scale revamp of the Berks History Center that will place updated interactive displays on the building’s multiple levels.
The company’s efforts have earned prestigious industry accolades from the likes of The Webby Awards, Forbes, SXSW and the American Alliance of Museums.
Exploring Inc. acquired NeoPangea
They’ve also earned the financial backing of Exploring Inc., an Atlanta-based platform of companies that delivers immersive environments and fabrication solutions.
Exploring acquired NeoPangea in March.
In a release, the companies noted that NeoPangea has collaborated with Exploring’s custom fabrication arm, ID3 Group, for years.
The acquisition formalizes that relationship and streamlines planning between the two, the release said.
“I’ve seen too many projects wrangled by multiple external vendors become harder than they needed to be,” Bagenstose said in the release. “Decisions get separated, timing gets delayed, and before you know it, you are fixing issues instead of building something great. Being part of Exploring changes that.”
Employees of NeoPangea and new parent company Exploring, Inc., honor Exploring’s fourth consecutive nomination to the Atlanta Association for Corporate Growth’s Georgia Fast 40 list. (Courtesy of NeoPangea)
Tucker noted that nothing about NeoPangea’s identity has changed with the acquisition.
“Technically it’s an acquisition, but it feels more like a partnership,” Tucker said. “It enables us to have conversations with all of these other experts in the same industry verticals, and also be supported by them, because we’re part of the same infrastructure.”
The work corral at NeoPangea, a design and marketing firm at 215 S. Fifth Ave., West Reading, is an open space to encourage interaction among staffers. (BILL UHRICH/MEDIANEWS GROUP)