Media Architecture Institute

Cabazon, California – March 2005 – Design firm Visual Terrain went hunting for a high impact, cost-effective way to brighten up the Morongo Casino and Resort. The architect’s desire for a visual experience to draw visitors from a distance as they approached the property meant to be of an extraordinary approach. Element Labs’ Versa TILE was the perfect blend of light and image. We were able to create a solution that literally stopped traffic on Interstate 10 (without accidents) and presented the property with a unique identity.

The Versa TILE X2 are encased in an exterior housing and may be attached to almost any outdoor surface. In Morongo’s case, tile strips were customized to fit on the curtain wall mullions, making installation fast and easy. The slim design also solved a cosmetic issue faced by the hotel. “This made the fixture practically invisible guests inside,” Levesque says, noting that while exterior lighting is important for a hotel, it’s also vital that it doesn’t overwhelm those staying inside.

via: elementlabs.com

Mobile telephone provider O2 Germany presented a spectacular showcase at the CeBIT 2005 trade show. Their approach featured the new Versa Pixel–single dots that grouped together produced over 28,000 points of moving light. The technology was adapted for the event by Element Labs, a company known for making exceptional designs possible through the convergence of light and video.

The Grand Indonesia tower (Jakarta, Indonesia) is a 57-story skyscraper covered with two LED videoscreens. The low-resolution back screen presents abstract motion art and the high-resolution foreground screen periodically presents lifestyle and branding content along the face of the building. Building visuals (both high and low resolution), comprise approximately 60,000 sq. ft. of LED video coverage along the exterior curtain wall.

Uniform LED strip lighting emphasises the curve of the corridors in the 54-storey “Turning Torso” tower. This futuristic apartment block, the tallest in Europe, corkscrews 190 metres into the sky like a twisting human torso at the “West Port” of Malmö. LED systems comprising DRAGONtape modules and OPTOTRONIC control gear are now proving their worth here in “real” lighting solutions.

Everyone taking the lift up their apartment in the “Turning Torso” is greeted on each floor by LED light from OSRAM. This futuristic apartment block corkscrews 190 metres into the sky like a twisting human torso at the “West Port” of Malmö. The 54-story tower was officially opened at the end of August 2005, the brainchild of the world famous Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava.

via: osram.com
photos: by mescon via flickr

The Torre Agbar, or Agbar Tower, has been designed by French architect Jean Nouvel. It opened in June 2005 and it was inaugurated officially by the King of Spain on 16. September 2005.

The Torre Agbar is a colored lighting illuminate skyline that pretend to become one of the 21st century landmark of Barcelona.

The Aegis Hyposurface is an outstanding piece of technics. It was designed by deCOi Architects and recieved the Feidad (= Far Eastern International Digital Architectural Design) Award 2001. It is still a remarkable design approach. The idea behind is, that due to the different positions of the small metall tiles, the reflection of the surrounding light is changing. In this way a tremendous poetic way of displaying patterns and shapes is possible.The Prototype consists out of about 1000 of these metall tiles. They are moved by “telescopic fingers” which reach a speed up to 60 km/h and have a stroke of 50 cm. Look at the following movies: Hyposurface01.AVI Hyposurface02.AVI

The Galleria Department Store is actually a refurbishment project. Originally the Galleria Building was windowless and not very appealing. The Owner Hanwha Stores Co, wanted to turn it into a landmark building that would reflect the innovation and style of the area, manifesting its own identity for quality, like the exclusive boutiques within its walls. So UN Studio and ARUP Lightning were asked to recreate the mall´s exterior. Together they developed a chameleon-like facade that reflects the subtleties of natural light on opalescent, dichroic glass discs during the day. At night the discs are individually backlit and controlled by a computer program to create brilliant and unique colour schemes all over the building – each disc acting like a big pixel on a giant screen. 4330 discs, each 850mm in diameter, make up the entire facade of the mall.

With a 10-floor palace of glass at the ritziest of all Tokyo addresses, Chanel launched its biggest boutique in the world. Designed by American architect Peter Marino, the 56-meter high building is set to dominate the elite Chuo-dori avenue. It has a massive curtain wall of glass that encapsulates a nest-shaped block of aluminum in Chanel handbags’ signature tweed pattern.The glass facade will light up Ginza each dusk to dawn with 700,000 embedded white light-emitting diodes.The Chanel Tower in the Ginza district of Tokyo is a true architectural integration of LED technology into a curtain wall. From inside and outside the LED technology appears transparent, allowing the office worker a clear an unobstructed view of the world during the day. The street view presents the worlds largest black and white video wall at night.The Hardware came from L.E.D. – Effects. You can also find a nice Video there wich shows the installation of the facade.

The Uniqua Insurance Company built a new headquarter in Vienna´s 2nd district. The Facade of the Tower is constructed as a double layered glass facade. In between there is enough space to situate the led modules. The spacing between the vertical led stripes is identical with the construction grid of the main facade. The resolution is not that high, but good enough to display photographic imagery. The special artistic content was done by Mader Stublic Wiermann. The technical part was done by lichtkunstlicht and Barco. The display may not be bright enough to run during daytime; it´s just being used during nighttime.

ag4|mediatecture company built a new type of media facade for the T-Mobile Headquarters in Bonn. The media facade wasn´t a part of the main construction design, but was added afterwards. It is said to be the first complete transparent media facade. The highly-developed led design was done by Lumino Lichttechnik.