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

Arup Lighting worked closely with hardware manufacturers Xilver and software developers E:Cue to refine the programming that operates the pixel colour changes.

This project has been shown at the Media Facades Exhbition Berlin 2008 and was published in the Exhibition Companion
(download the Catalogue Pdf – 7 Mb).

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.

This project has been shown at the Media Facades Exhbition Berlin 2008 and was published in the Exhibition Companion
(download the Catalogue Pdf – 7 Mb).

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.

Technical Details:

Resolution: about 40 000 Pixel

Additional Information:

http://www.ledsmagazine.com/articles/news/3/5/17/1

This project has been shown at the Media Facades Exhbition Berlin 2008 and was published in the Exhibition Companion
(download the Catalogue Pdf – 7 Mb).

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.

The led modules are integrated in metal extrusions. Due to it´s brightness and it´s fast responding leds this fassade has the ability to display both, static and animated content also during daytime. Content can be updated online by ag4. Thus it is possible to meet the fast changing communication requirements for a company like T-Mobile.
Some technical Details:
Resolution: about 244 000 Pixel
Best viewing distance: 40 meters

via: www.medienfassade.com, photo by blacktar via flickr

SPOTS media facade is a temporary projects by Realities:United. Here’s some more information provided by Generator X. (Photo by Bernd Hiepe)

“SPOTS will be a gallery for a series of curated art projects for public space. Commissioned by ad agency Café Palermo Pubblicità for HVB Immobilien AG, the installation was designed by Realities:United, a Berlin-based architecture studio with previous experience in creating large-scale light installations. Their BIX facade for Kunsthaus Graz garnered much international attention, and won them more than a few awards.

SPOTS will last for 18 months, with four commissioned works by Jim Campbell, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Carsten Nicolai and Realities:United in collaboration with John Dekron. The selection was curated by Andreas Broeckmann, director of the Transmediale festival. Visitors to Transmediale 2006 will have a chance to see all four works, as they are shown one per day in a special showing for the festival.” (via Generator X)

Light+Building (L+B) is an international fair that took place in Frankfurt (April 23 – 26). Seems to be interesting also in respect to mediafacades. I took a closer look at the catalogue: The  following companies have shown interesting products or proejcts that could be usefull for mediafacades g-lec | you will see | grid type LED curtain, se-ag.ch Leurocom – Electronic Displays, Tryka L.E.D. Ltd – Home,  Lumileds LED Lighting – Luxeon LEDs,  ARKANZ – Home,  ECKELT GLAS GmbH.

In parallel to L+B there is a light art festival called Luminale with interesting projects. Here are some Pictures from Luminale. L+B is biannual event. Next fair is April 2008.

There are two events about mediafacades, you shouldm’t miss, when you are in Vienna. Meet us there.

sundays 171
mixed reality 4… media facades
Meeting point: Architekturzentrum Wien – Podium
sundays: Sunday, Apr. 02, 2006, 05:00 pm – 09:00 pm
Tickets: EUR 16.- / EUR 11.50 with reduction
more info

virtual dschungle 5
Media facades
Location: Architekturzentrum Wien – Podium
Presentation: Wednesday, Apr. 05, 2006, 07:00 pm
Tickets: Free entry!
more info

LEDs integrated in glass. What about maintainance? Throw the whole window away once a led source is broken? The product is called Power Glass.

Also in 2006 there will be a two day international conference and exhibition Urban Screens 06: Demonstrating the Potential of Public Screens for Urban Interaction.

Some years ago Christian Möller, Joachim Sauter from ART+COM have published some interesting ideas for the EXPO in Hannover. They can be found at netzspannung.org. There’s a paper Das vierte Format: Die Fassade als mediale Haut der Architektur [PDF | 669 KB ] published in 2004.