Media Architecture Institute

Created in 2011 by Timo Santala, Olli Sirén and Antti Tuomola the Restaurant day encourages common people to open their own restaurants, cafés and bars for a single day. The initial restaurant day was the result of the founders’ frustration with bureaucratic hurdles and regulations that made impossible to create pop-up eateries in Finland. They discovered, however, that the Finnish laws allowed to open a restaurant without permits if was only for a single day. Then they came with the idea of promoting a bit of civil disobedience by organizing the restaurant day, an event that turns the city into a carnival that promotes and celebrates food culture, only for a day.

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dotvot.es is an interactive installation placed on the facade of the Northeastern University’s Ryder Hall. Dotvot.es was opened on the 24th of April and is working on the evening hours. The installation comprises two large LED matrices mounted on a corner window of the building. The matrices are placed perpendicular to each other, creating a 3 dimensional effect that resembles a cube matrix.

To control the dotvot.es installation the students developed an online application that collects, aggregates and delivers data generated by the users. The online application asks the visitors about their current feelings showing them the following options: anxious, relieved, determined, exited, or exhausted. The votes gathered are processed and then displayed in the media facade.

With dotvot.es the creators want to show how interactive media architecture contributes to the everyday life in a meaningful way, by visualizing the mood of the people inside and outside of the university campus.

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The Civil Debate Wall allows students, teachers and citizens to share their positions regarding a broad range of national issues such as income distribution, civil rights, and environmental policies, among others. The debates are made possible by a system that by mixes large touch screens with a website and a texting service to connect the opinions and create constructive dialogues across different platforms. The elements of the system are synchronized to deliver a single experience to all the participants and enable the following of a particular discussion.

The Wall is installed at University of Florida’s Pugh Hall. It comprises 5 large touch screens that show the current question, an answer to this question an a picture of the answer’s author. The users can engage by touching the screen and creating an answer to the main question or by giving a reply to another user’s answer. After posting their comment, they can decide whether they want to follow the conversation through text messages.

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In New York City there are more than five hundreds acres of publicly owned vacant land that are not being used and remain closed behind fences and chains. This land is concentrated in neighborhoods that are in need for beneficial land uses such as community gardens. 596 Acres is a project that facilitates access to New York city’s publicly owned land through the use of open source tools and hands-on mentorships. In this way, 596 acres help the communities to access unused lots, transform them temporarily, and so, improve the quality of life in the area where they live in.

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Every year in Denmark about 400.000 bicycles are discarded. Niels Bonefeld and Henrik Mortensen identified a chance in this problem and decided to take action. They figured out how to collect, repair and reuse some of the Denmark’s scrapped bicycles and send them to Sierra Leone and Mozambique. They created a schema that links a bicycle rental shop in Copenhagen with micro-loans in Sierra Leone and Mozambique. In this way, Baisikeli avoids the waste of resources and contributes to the development of different countries. (more…)

Change by Us is an online application that allows the citizens to submit ideas and collaborate on projects to improve their own city. With an opening screen similar to a sticky note board, the internet site encourages the publication of new ideas as well as the organization and participation in projects to realize such ideas. The project was initially created for the city of New York, but is has been also implemented in Philadelphia and Phoenix. As the code has been released under a AGPL license it emerges as a promising model for other cities and citizens interested to take action.

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Force Field is the dynamic light installation Rogier van der Heide created with his students for the Gallery space Phase 2 in London. The work was developed in collaboration with Arup staff and with students from the University of Applied Sciences in Amsterdam. The installation consists of 64 inter-dependent luminous rods forming a wave of changing colour. The installation mimics the forces and energies that flow through a building and acts like a magnetic field. A sensor allows the visitor to change the colour or to scan an Oyster card to create a personalised light show. The result is a compelling walk-through environment of inspring you with 16 million colour variations. (more…)

Eden Park, New Zealand’s largest sports ground, is well-known for hosting international and local cricket and rugby events. The Eden Park Trust recently renovated much of the stadium in order to provide an upgraded world stage for its high-profile events, such as the 2011 Rugby World Cup. Part of the redevelopment effort was a new 24,000-seat South stand, a three-tier structure that replaced the old South and South West. (more…)

Friedrichshafen Airport has a new landmark: the Dornier Museum for aeronautics in Friedrichshafen is shaped like a hangar, impressively representing the fascination of flying. While, during the day, light penetrates into the building through large windows, the museum turns into a glittering point of light at night – with a lighting installation by James Turrell adding to the effect. (more…)

Inspired by the experience of walking through a forest’s dappled light, Canopy is a 90-meter long light sculpture spanning the front facade of the Maple Leaf Square building in Toronto, Canada. (more…)

Located on the east side of Huangpu River, near the Lujiazuei International Financial District and a striking contrast to the neo-classical buildings along the Bund on the opposite river bank, Shanghai Pearl TV Tower is not only the most remarkable building in Shanghai, but has become the symbolic icon that illuminating the energetic and cultural image of Shanghai City that continuously showcases her beauty to the world.

Shanghai Oriental Pearl TV Tower was built and completed on 1 October, 1994. Though twenty years have come and gone, this iconic Tower has seen an influx of thousands and upon thousands of visitors from all over the world, coming together to embrace the beauty of this Pearl Tower.

As planned, the outdoor lighting system has been re-designed and renovated every decade in order to usher in a new era that shows the best of her beauty to the world. This year, 2014, marks Phase 2 of the renovation, which stands for the most advanced outdoor lighting design and technology. It is expected to attain the world-class level as well as showing the culture, technology, innovation, romance and irresistible charm that surprises all visitors all over the world not only to behold but to gain an amazing experience. StrongLED, as the responsible company for the execution of phase 2 of the project, has achieved an outstanding work.

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