Media Architecture Institute

Thorsten Bauer was a keynote speaker at the MAB14, invited by our partner ONLYGLASS GMBH. In his presentation he will talk about “media architecture”.

URBANSCREEN is a Bremen based creative company, internationally known by their large-scale projections on urban surfaces.

Christoph Sodemann met Thorsten Bauer in Bremen and talked with him about his views on media architecture and current projects of URBANSCREEN. “URBANSCREEN takes a special part in the field of media architecture. We have an artistic approach and come from the content side. During the past years we developed highly artistically driven temporary installations and projection mapping.”

“Through our experience we have a specific point of view to media architecture. In Aarhus I’d like to show some works and our standpoint how we think content for permanent installations should be developed.”

“We really have to make up our minds how to deal with media architecture, especially in terms of over-information at the public space. You can point out a lot of critical aspects. We have to figure out a clever way how to deal with media facades and permanent installations.”

“Klubhaus St. Pauli in Hamburg is one of our new projects, where you really can play out the power of media facades.“

The project Dia lights / Urban canvas won a Media Architecture Award in the category Money architecture.

In May 2013, The Confederation of Danish Industry (DI) moved back into their rebuilt headquarters at Raadhuspladsen in the heart of Copenhagen. The extensive architectural task has been carried out by Transform who has redesigned the physical manifestation of the DI.

The new exterior part of the building consists of a great media façade, as a beacon of aesthetics in a sea of visual noise flowing in and around one of the most heavily trafficked intersections in Copenhagen. A team consisting of Kollision, Martin Professional and Transform worked with DI in designing and developing a language of light in line with the DI brand, exploiting the diagonal nature of the LED-structure on the façade.

The new exterior part of the building consists of a 4,000 m2 media façade, as a beacon of aesthetics in a sea of visual noise flowing in and around one of the most heavily trafficked intersections in Copenhagen.

The different light designs have been turned into generic plugins that fit into Kollision’s player-system. These light plugins can be controlled by the graphical department at DI who can tweak and modify parameters like speed, colors, and direction creating thousands of different expressions – still within the limits of each plugin. The team behind the project has worked on developing a design manual for how the dynamic content of the façade can change during day, night, seasons and special occasions.

As part of the media façade Kollision created the interactive plugin, ‘Urban Canvas’ that allows by-passers to interact with the façade by using their smartphones. By entering a mobile website, users can paint on the façade by swiping their finger across the touch screen of their smart phone, instantly painting with light on building. Multiple users can use the system simultaneously; creating a busy and playful collaborative artwork that keeps on changing. The ‘Urban Canvas’ was developed in dialogue with DI and implemented for the first time at ‘Culture Night 2013’ in Copenhagen.

Credits

Ben Stricker, Wolfgang Leeb, members of the Media Architecture Institute, talk about the installation called City bug report, created for the city hall tower of Aarhus. They equipped the railings of four floors in the tower with LED strips. This setup allowed to display some low-res images in different sides of the building. They successfully tackled all the challenges related to the installation of more that 4000 LEDs from AHL on the tower. For that they got the help from the production team of CAVI in Aarhus. Installing power and signaling across different floors proved to be a demanding task, that took about three days to be completed. However they succeeded in their attempt and the installation became a reality.

Jaimie Allen talks about the doctoral consortium at the Media Architecture Biennale. He mentions that the consortium is a forum where people coming from different backgrounds and departments can meet and discuss about topics that are shared. It is an opportunity to transgress the rigid structures of the university and talk in a relaxed environment about the own research and experiences. For example persons working on Interaction design or electronics can talk with people looking at public spaces.

Alexander Wiethoff, Martin Tomitsch, members of the Media Architecture Institute, talk about the workshops of the Media Architecture Biennale. There is a broad spectrum of workshops formats, including industry, hands-on, and studio tours. In a way they represent that Media Architecture is a broad field, that includes media artists, researches at HCI and local designers. The workshops are a platform to communicate and exchange ideas about media, technology and architecture in the city. The interdisciplinary collaboration is a key aspect of the workshops, and they represent an opportunity to exchange ideas, knowledge and include such into to the own practice.