The Faculty of Architecture, Design and Planing at The University of Sydney has recently installed a SmartSlab LED screen inside the window display facing the yard in front of the faculty building.

SmartSlab has attracted quite some attention since it was introduced a few years ago by b consultants ltd, an architectural consultancy run by Tom Barker. It is specifically unique due to its resistant structure and modular approach: the screen is shipped in 600 x 600mm tiles that can be built up into large arrays of any size. The steel and polycarbonate structure allows it to be even used as flooring or curtain walls in buildings.

Another very unique quality of the SmartSlab is that it uses hexagonal pixels - ‘hexels’. This concept is based on the fly’s compound eye and achieves a better optical appearance than conventional screen pixels, since the hexels are always equidistant to each other. Each tile comprises 672 hexels.

The screens can run any Quicktime movie or DVD as well as Quartz Composer applications, which allows designers and researchers to develop dynamic visualizations or even interactive applications based on webcam vision tracking, WII controllers, etc.

The SmartSlab at the Faculty of Architecture, Design and Planing currently shows digital artworks created by students from the Design Computing program. Researchers at the group are currently investigating interactive application scenarios that take the physical context of the yard into consideration. On the long run the screen will be integrated into the buildings façade to achieve better visibility from long distances.

We will post additional information as the project progresses.

Walking down the Ginza is like strolling through a glossy magazine - and these buildings are the ads. These brand images are largely communicated through the facades, which increasingly resemble screens. The Chanel store uses a facade composed of hundreds of thousands of LEDs - a high-res building-sized video screen. Uniqlo is an exception to the high end brands in Ginza - having built its brand providing basic clothing at reasonable prices. So in contrast to the sleekness of the other facades, our approach at Uniqlo Ginza was to go simple and basic.

If facades are now screens, our Uniqlo facade is a pixilated “electro-retro” version. It is made up of a matrix of one thousand illuminated cells, whose luminosity can be individually controlled to produce chunky Tetris-style patterns on the facade. A mirror-finish stainless steel grid placed over this screen has the effect of breaking up and blurring off its sharp edges. The four-square Uniqlo logo shines through all, lit up with a bright LED array. Luxury, at low-res.

via: City of Sound

The FLARE system

FLARE is a modular system to create a dynamic hull for facades or any building or wall surface. Acting like a living skin, it allows a building to express, communicate and interact with its environment. FLARE turns the building facade into a penetrable kinetic membrane, breaking with all conventions of the building surface as a static skin.

FLARE units

The FLARE system consists of a number of tiltable metal flake bodies supplemented by individually controllable pneumatic cylinders.
Due to the developed pattern, an infinite array of flakes can be mounted on any building or wall surface in a modular system of multiplied FLARE units.

The visual effect

Each stainless steel flake reflects the bright sky or sunlight when in vertical standby position. When the flake is tilted downwards by a computer controlled pneumatic piston, its face is shaded from the sky light and this way appears as a dark pixel.
By reflecting ambient or direct sunlight, the individual flakes of the FLARE system act like pixels formed by natural light.

The system is controlled by a computer to form any kind of surface animation. Sensor systems inside and outside the building communicate the buildings activity directly to the FLARE system which acts as the buildings lateral line.

via: flare-facade.com

“nature04″ is a public project, transforming the 20 story Lilleurope Tower into a luminous kinetic sculpture. It´s dramaturgy is based on the idea of a jaquemart, a mechanical public clockwork, the basis of our technologically advanced culture. The mechanical clock, giving the time by slicing it up in standardized temporal units, marks the final transition from experiencing time as a continuum without a beginning and an end to perceiving it as sequential, as a sequence of discrete events lined up on a timeline.

“nature04″ is taking the concepts of time, sequence and the matrix to create a contemporary jaquemart, an ephemeral clockwork composed of animated lights, a clock of light displaying specific kinetic patterns and prints throughout the night. In cycles, bursts of light spread over the sides of the tower and then, subside again, like a wave that has washed ashore and emptied itself. Eventually there is only darkness and stillness - the tower rests as if exhausted by all the excitement displayed. Regaining “consciousness” at specific moments, these light patterns, often display static icons on the screen at the conclusion of a sequence of waves, functioning like punctuation marks along the timeline.

via: www.hentschlager.info