038 REPORT
THE SHARD
Company: Dataton Location: London, UK
At a height of 1,016ft Renzo Piano’s Shard is the tallest building in Western Europe and has redefined the London skyline. Conceived by the Pritzker Prize-winning architect as a vertical town incorporating offices, restaurants, residences, shops and the prestigious five-star Shangri-La Hotel, The Shard is the centre-piece of a £2bn regeneration project at London Bridge Quarter on the south side of the River Thames. The View From The Shard visitor attraction - the first part of the building to open - enables Londoners and tourists to enjoy the 360º views from the highest public levels 69 and 72 which, at up to 800ft are almost twice the height of any other viewing platform in the capital. The design of the visitor experience was carried out by Event Communications, working in collaboration with Renzo Piano, the architect for The Shard. Renzo Piano explained: “London is a city of inspiration and imagination. We wanted to create a public space where people could visit the building to experience London in a different way and also feel that they have discovered the spirit of the building. On top of the city, but also within it.” Event Communications were responsible for the experiential design of the whole The View From The Shard attraction, including the foyer and pre-show area at the dedicated entrance in Joiner Street, the ticket area and retail installation on Level 01, experiences on level 33 and 68 and a retail boutique on Level 68. The spaces on Level 00 and 01 utilise Dataton Watchout to integrate multiple HD video images into a single whole image, along with synchronised multimedia content playout. The foyer and pre-show area feature a five metre wide by three metre high flat-panel video wall showing filmic content designed to put The Shard into a his- torical and geographical context, while a four metre by one metre video wall, with the screens arranged to form a single portrait-mode column, provides up-to-date information for visitors regarding the schedule of their trip. “It is all about taking visitors on a journey, and the ground-floor galleries offer a witty approach to that journey, giving visitors filmic and graphic images of London and famous Londoners, some of whom you might not associate with the city at all,” said Kevin Murphy, Development Director of Event Communications. Between Levels 68 and 72, a series of a dozen ‘Tell:scopes’ act as digital tele- scopes, identifying places of interest in the user’s sight line and offering informa- tion on 200 London landmarks in a choice of 10 different languages. Explaining the role played by visual technology in the visitor-experience concept, Kevin said: “What we have here is a combination of a show system with digital signage. We were very restricted in terms of space, and we knew the system had to be flexible because with signage, you never know what the customer is going to do with it once the operation has started. “Using Watchout allows the content to be dynamic and updated as necessary. We can even insert 4K video files without any loss of quality or flexibility. Content is king, and with Watchout, we’re delighted with the quality of that content.” David Willrich of DJW is similarly effusive in his praise for Watchout, which offers the ability to blend and merge images from any source, and then synchronise their playback along with audio, lighting control and other show data, according to a pre-programmed schedule. “Past experience has taught us that Watchout is a rock-solid platform,” said David. “What we particularly like about it is that it scales very well while maintaining image quality. The software simply embraces the data you feed it with, processes it, and then gets the job done.”
www.dataton.com
www.mondodr.com
Photos © The View from The Shard
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