Media Facades

The Cloud, London

The history of Olympics and Expos is one of heaviness– of mass and monumentality and conspicuous expenditure on immovable objects whose legacy has occasionally endured, but have always been outdated. Our most extraordinary contemporary feats of engineering are more stealthy, more extensive and more invisible than these traditions of glass and brickand steel: Code rather than Carbon.

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Update Mediafacade Bayer Tower, Leverkusen

The cladding of the former Bayer corporate Headquarter in Leverkusen with the mesh systems Mediamesh® and Illumesh® is almost completed. The last of the overall 684, each 7, 20 metres long and four metres wide weave panels have been assembled. The 122 metre high building is going to be completely cladded with the stainless steel mesh with interwoven LED profiles. 18,000 square metres of the stainless steel mesh – that equals the size of approximately two and a half soccer pitches – cover the 29 floors of the building. The 5.6 million LEDS will turn the distinctive building into a landmark of a successful industrial history.

Mediamesh® and Illumesh® are joint products of GKD – Gebr- Kufferath AG and ag4 media façade GmbH.

Thanks to Andrew Hyman for the hint!

by: ag4, GKD

Der Indenmann, Inden-Germany

The Indemann was designed by the Maastricht architecture firm Maurer United Architects as a symbol of the structural-political evolution of the former mining region near Inden. This 36 meter high, accessible steel sculpture, built on a brown coal dump, resembles in its form a primitive robot. The Indemann gets its unique brightness from Illumesh® – a semitransparent skin made of stainless steel mesh with interwoven LED profiles by GKD – Gebrüder Kufferath AG. During the day, the metallic surface shimmers and reflects light, then at night a computer-controlled light show comes to life. The worldwide patented system is a cooperative product of GKD and ag4 media facade GmbH, Cologne. The Indemann is the first public project in Germany where Illumesh® is in use. After the spectacular dress rehearsal at the beginning of August, which attracted already over 2.500 spectators, the official inauguration of the steel colossus is on September 5th. The specially by ag4 developed and tailored show represents the transition of a changing cultural landscape and forms the basis for the atmospheric dense, smoothly shifting color and light patterns changes, as a symbol of the transformation from coal mining area towards a research-, educational and recreational region.

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Rheinpartie, Germany

Spectacular images in the Rhine Valley: The Germania wrapped in the European flag, the Loreley a mountain of german words, the ruins of Rheinfels: Risen from ruins. Projections of international artists transform castles, monuments and ruins in the valley of the Loreley (Unesco World Heritage Upper Middle Rhine Valley).

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555 KUBIK, Hamburg

555 KUBIK | facade projection | from urbanscreen on Vimeo.

“How it would be, if a house was dreaming”

The conception of this project consistently derives from its underlying architecture – the theoretic conception and visual pattern of the Hamburg Kunsthalle. The Basic idea of narration was to dissolve and break through the strict architecture of O. M. Ungers “Galerie der Gegenwart”. Resultant permeabilty of the solid facade uncovers different interpretations of conception, geometry and aesthetics expressed through graphics and movement. A situation of reflexivity evolves – describing the constitution and spacious perception of this location by means of the building itself.

by:rossarossa.de, urbanscreen.com
via: interactivearchitecture.org

the yas hotel, abu dhabi

Asymptote Architecture, the award-winning, New York-based practice, nears completion of The Yas Hotel project in Abu Dhabi, UAE. The Yas Hotel is a 500-room, 85,000-square-meter complex now under construction by Aldar Properties PJSC.

The Yas Hotel is one of the main architectural features of the ambitious 36-billion-dollar Yas Marina development and accompanying Formula 1 raceway circuit, also near completion. Asymptote’s founders and partners Hani Rashid and Lise Anne Couture envisioned an architectural landmark embodying various key influences and inspirations ranging from the aesthetics and forms associated with speed, movement and spectacle to the artistry and geometries forming the basis of ancient Islamic art and craft traditions.

The main feature of the project’s design, a 217-meter expanse of sweeping, curvilinear forms constructed of steel and 5,800 pivoting diamond-shaped glass panels. This Grid-Shell component affords the building an architecture comprised of an atmospheric-like veil that contains two hotel towers and a link bridge constructed as a monocoque sculpted steel object passing above the Formula 1 track that makes its way through the building complex. The Grid-Shell visually connects and fuses the entire complex together while producing optical effects and spectral reflections that play against the surrounding sky, sea and desert landscape. The architecture as a whole “performs” as both an environmentally responsive solution as well as an architecture of spectacle and event.

via: asymptote-architecture.com