TECHNOLOGY
by
Robert Such
39
MEDIA FACADE
COMMENT
TALKING BUILDINGS
NO LONGER THE STUFF OF SCIENCE FICTION DIRECTORS’ DREAMS, BIG URBAN SCREENS ARE
SHOWING UP ACROSS THE GLOBE, ENORMOUS SOFTWARE-DRIVEN DISPLAYS LIGHTING UP THE
NIGHTTIME URBAN STREET-SCAPE, PUTTING CORPORATE LOGOS, DIGITAL ARTWORKS AND THE
PUBLIC’S POCKET SCREEN CONTENT ON THE SIDES OF BUILDINGS. ROBERT SUCH REPORTS
Media facade by
realities:united. Espacio
de Creación Artística
Contemporánea in
Cordoba by Nieto
Sobejano architects.
Image courtesy of
realities:united
Ongoing research is exploring researchers agree that software have been around forever,” he and at a distance, the shapes on
ways to visually communicate a will play as an important a role says. “LED screens are just the the mirrored foil squares resolved
connected community’s emotional as hardware in creating engaging brighter, lower-resolution children in the viewer’s eye into a pixellat-
state or interests - through social content and sustainable media of the old video walls that you ed static African landscape scene.
networks, website forums, mobile wall design. To create a work that used to see all over MTV. What’s In the evening, some 250,000
phone technology - the function enhances public space, the link interesting is how the resolution monochrome LEDs illuminated
or functioning of a building, the between site-specific media con- has really dropped - or how the artist Marc Tamschick’s seven-
outside environment (something tent and the facade’s built form pixel has grown,” says Haw. “The minute looping video of African
that light artists like Yann Kersalé needs to be an early consider- pixel is like a new prize fetish, the images.
have been involved in for some ation in the design process. What most primitive of building blocks.” “The use of a media facade [is]
years), artists’ digital artworks, or to show on the screen shouldn’t But content and pixellation can high tech,” says Tamschick, “but
to convey the corporate identity arrive as an afterthought. complement each other, such as in a very low-tech version with big
of a building’s tenant. Combined Alex Haw, an Architectural As- on the media wall of the tem- pixels, no resolution. [It] copies
with motion sensors and face sociation tutor and the head of porary African Pavilion at Expo the tribal art used for patterns and
detection systems, media archi- Atmos, a London-based experi- Zaragoza 2008 in Spain. Working tribal prints in a modern way. It is
tecture presents some exciting mental collaborative architectural with Ledon, German architectural archaic, but a modern version.”
opportunities for changing the practice, is less impressed by the firm Atelier Brückner designed At a building and lighting compo-
character of buildings and public current 2D pixellated facade. the pavilion’s 218-metre long nent level, current lines of design
spaces. “Media facades are claimed to be curved facade of semi-transpar- research include integrating LEDs
Media architecture designers and the great new thing but of course ent printed pixels. During the day, into a fabric-like, wire media
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