The University seeks to foster creativity in various fields of study, provide students with professional art and design expertise, and make a lasting contribution to the industry and society at large. To help support this mission, the University unveiled a new satellite facility in Osaka in the spring of 2002, housing the University’s Division of Continuing Education. To best symbolize its focus on the marriage of traditional art and modern innovation, the approximately 200-foot high building makes use of the latest advancements in intelligent LED illumination from Color Kinetics Japan to distinguish its presence against the Osaka city skyline.

Designed by internationally renowned artist James Turrell, who explores the use of light and space to create extraordinary works of art, the building’s illuminated facade is awash with color and movement. Turrell implemented a design that incorporates four ethereal lighting effects to highlight and animate the facade. Applying rich displays of red, green, blue, yellow, and white light, the cycle of effects begins with one, uniform color. The color then gradually changes from one to another in a series of intricate patterns: rising from the building’s bottom to the top, unfolding from left to right, and slowly diffusing outward from the building’s center.

via: Color Kinetics

Every morning and evening, Magic Monkey’s living architecture project for Electrabel’s Power Station in Drogenbos, Belgium comes alive. Thousands of people driving by the power station every day are treated to a visual feast of color in motion.

Since December 9, 2005, the massive tower has been illuminated via the unique corseted design and placement of 8,032 individually controllable RGB LED pixels within Element Labs half-meter Versa TUBEs . With 57 light lines, the dynamic lighting has become an integral part of the tower’s architecture.

Magic Monkey has created a sophisticated animation around the cooling tower by operating each LED separately and adjusting the intensity. This allows them to create all the colors of the rainbow – and to change the colors up to 30 times per second. For control, the company is using 2 Element Labs Versa Drive D2 processors and an Apple Computer Mac mini with Element Labs Versatility software for playback.

via:www.elementlabs.com

On the top-floor observation deck of the Rockefeller Center in New York, a unique, interactive space has been created with the use of intelligent LED lighting supplied by Color Kinetics. Cameras track individual visitors as they move within the space, and signal the LED fixtures to create a series of individual colors and patterns. Conceptualized by Electroland of Los Angeles, the Target Interactive Breezeway has intelligently controlled LED light fixtures on all its surfaces.

Data from four stereo video cameras is combined to locate and individually track up to 30 separate visitors as they enter and walk around the space. Upon entry each visitor is automatically assigned a “personality” by the 3-D tracking system and is in turn followed by individualized light colors and patterns.

via: electroland.net

A fountain in Chicago’s Millennium Park features two giant LED-lit towers faced with LED displays.The fountain consists of two 50-foot-high glass-block towers facing each other across a shallow 232-foot-long reflecting pool.On three sides, the towers glow from within thanks to color-changing LED lighting fixtures – approximately 70 units per tower – supplied by Color Kinetics, while the fourth sides feature Barco LED display screens that face each other across the reflecting pool.

The screens feature the expressive faces of almost 1,000 Chicagoans, changing at short intervals and spouting water from giant mouths.

via: colorkinetics.com, ksarch.com

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 innovative concept and design, from Munich Studios’ KMS Team and Schmidhuber + Partner, was creating buzz even prior to the event. Installed by Mixed Pixels, the display consisted of Versa Pixels placed at the end of plastic tubes suspended from the ceiling. The varying tube lengths and spacing created distinct colorized pixels that merged into waves of images, giving visitors the impression of moving beneath a three dimensional “Media Cloud” with images wafting across it.

According to Rudi Hennies, the project’s technical manager, “The result absolutely stunning. Everyone attending CeBIT was mesmerized by the O2 ceiling; it was definitely the most popular thing at the show.” Hennies also noted, “The entire system was extremely well designed and much easier to install than anyone expected. Element Labs provided us with excellent support, and I look forward to working with them again in the future.”

The O2 exhibit also included a radio station that took advantage of the Tube´s remarkable adaptability. Changing content was effortless through the power of computer-controlled programming. During radio broadcasts, the tube content morphed to reflect radio news items, programs, and other events.

via: elementlabs.com

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.

The building was created by Darryl Yamamoto, AIA, director of Austin Veum Robbins Partners (AVRP) and Mixed Use Studio, both of Los Angeles (AVRP also has a San Diego office). Yamamoto was formerly with RTKL, where he designed the project.

“Essentially, the LED grid followed the form of the building’s curtain wall,” Yamamoto said. “Thus, the LED video strips were mounted against the building in several types of formations. In some instances, where there was glass, the LED video strips were placed inside the glass, facing outwards towards the public. Where there were opaque, metal panels on the building skin, the LED strips were recessed into reveals.”

via:www.electronicdisplaycentral.com
Text: Louis M. Brill

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 building is characterized by its nocturnal illumination: it has more than 4,000 luminous devices that use technology LED. A total of 4,500 L3 RGB lights were installed to illuminate the 32 floors of offices in the Agbar tower. The lighting system, which contains 4,500 L3 RGB lights, is controlled from a single computer.

Jean Nouvel wrote on this project: “This is not a tower, a skyscraper, in the American sense. It is a more an emergence, rising singularly in the center of a generally calm city. Unlike slender spires and bell towers that typically pierce the horizons of horizontal cities, this tower is a fluid mass that bursts through the ground like a geyser under permanent, calculated pressure.”

via:ledlightray.com
Photo: by megapiksl via flikr

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

More about this all you can find in the following book:

Liu, Yu-Tung
Defining Digital Architecture – 2001 FEIDAD Award
Basel; Birkhäuser 2001
Preisgekrönte Entwürfe der digitalen Architektur