In 2001 an open tender was released by Coventry City council to produce a piece of work for The Phoenix Initiative. The brief asked to provide a creative solution for a 60 metre wide x 2 metre high wall on the outside of a major new shopping development in Coventry City Centre.

The Wall is split into seven large panels that span the 60m length. It is constructed from 160,000 marbles sandwiched between two sheets of steel which give the wall an tactile and intricate surface. Behind the sheets are 60 coloured neon tubes that switch on when it gets dark. The tubes are connected to motion sensors which are turned on for a short period of time when someone walks past.

One of the seven panels has an LED screen set behind the marbles. This is linked to a system which allows people to send text messages to the screen via their mobile phone. The messages instantly scroll across the panel and are then added to a playlist that replays the messages the following day. Adding this functionality has lifted the project from being a purely decorative piece and has proved extremely popular with the people of Coventry.

by: baynesandco.com, graemecrowley.com

Realities United created for the ILUMA building in Singapore RU a light and media facade, which had to be effective both during day and night. The project is part of a new development (Urban Entertainment Center) designed by WOHA architects1. In various ways this concept blurs boundaries as it actively merges the concept of a media screen with an ornamental architectural screen filtering air and light and as it blends abstract futuristic shapes with a 1970’s Vegas style.

The „screen“ facade is formed by a tessellated pattern made up by physical plastic bodies. A regular matrix of fluorescent lamps is superimposed onto (into) this idiosyncratic physical structure. That produces a display screen, which however is vividly distorted by the strong geometry of the individual light fixture and which is peppered by the regular perforations of the physical screen as well as by variations in the arrangements of the light fixture objects.

By intention a complex and ambivalent impression.
On one side there is the impression of an ultra large media screen, which is not yet fully there. It appears to be still deep frozen under a surface of ice, cracking and thawing. A herald of a fundamental change of architecture, which is about to transform from a static to a dynamic art.
On the other side the individual blinking crystals carry a strong reminiscence to the look of the “modern city” of the 20thThe idea of “entertainment” linked to flashing neon signs and excessive baroque carpets of light bulbs with its on-off moving aesthetic. Because there will be change. Being the first development inside the new officially promoted Bugis night life area of Singapore the project anticipates the arrival of several competitors over the next 15 years. Instead of starting a race in latest tech LED glamour, which the project would soon loose to its younger competitors the project concentrates on establishing a superb size and lighting power in combination with a striking visual appearance thereby building the claim of becoming the areas first and lasting land mark.

UEC Iluma facade by realities:united from autokolor on Vimeo.

via:realities-united.de

The Raiffeisen office building in Vienna has been nicknamed “Die Welle” (The Wave) because of its S-shaped façade. With its coloured LED lines including cabling, control and programming, Ledon has given the building façade accent lighting that can be seen for miles. The vibrant yellow meets the corporate design guidelines perfectly and makes the building an instant calling card for the company.
Up to now the employees of Raiffeisen International had offices in three different buildings. To unite them under one roof and therefore strengthen the feeling of togetherness, the renowned architect Hans Hollein planned a building that was aligned perfectly with the S-shaped street along the side of the building plot. This architectural wonder on the edge of Vienna’s Stadtpark (City Park) is a spacious building of 11,000 m² and very quickly became known as “Die Welle” (The Wave).

LED string: true colours, continuous appearance and user-friendly design For eye-catching façade lighting Zumtobel and Ledon developed a special line consisting of around 36,000 LEDs, with each LED having a special yellow-white colour. Integrated in the Raiffeisen-yellow diffuser the string produces light in the precise corporate colour. To create a uniform line it was essential to focus on two specific design aspects. White LEDs were used that were all within in single colour location. This was particularly important because even slight discrepancies could be considered annoying. Special cabling ensures that the spacing between the individual tubes is minimal, which makes the line appear continuous. Thanks to DMX512 each light line can be individually controlled.

via: ledonlighting.com
Fotos: Walter Luttenberger

Once Fussach was dominated by excavators, now it is much more picturesque with boats and yachts. A former gravel pit has been converted into a sparkling new harbour on Lake Constance. The Nordwesthaus building designed by Baumschlager Eberle rises 14 meters directly out of the water. Its unique architecture makes it an impressive addition to the area. Underneath the glass cube are decorative curved concrete walls that blend perfectly with the natural surroundings of reed and trees and are beautifully illuminated in LED light. In the evening the Nordwesthaus is a real eye-catcher. Dynamic colour sequences bring the unique building façade to life, creating a wide variety of displays within the basic architectural elements. When the building is bathed in greenish blue light it takes on the appearance of reeds that are being swayed in a gentle night-time breeze over the lake.
Yellow and red shades give the building a fiery glow so the Nordwesthaus becomes the fourth element alongside water, earth and air. Slow changes of colour in cool white tones are mirrored in the lake to produce fascinating reflections of infinite variety. Go inside the multi-functional building and the effect is just as captivating. The lighting scenes draw people in and give the entire space a pleasant atmosphere without being intrusive.

A complete solution – from LEDs to user-friendly lighting management

As an LED applications specialist Ledon has created an easy-to-use solution for this project that shows the wide range of design options that LED technology can provide. The 125 LED spotlights developed in cooperation with Baumschlager Eberle specifically for this project are cleverly arranged in the façade of the building to produce optimum lighting. The 12 integrated RGB LEDs per luminaire offer an immense spectrum of more than 16 million colours. This means that the colour of the lighting can change subtly from one shade to the next through the entire colour spectrum. The compact luminaires are fitted with asymmetrical optics to ensure that the amoeba-like voids in the concrete walls are fully illuminated. The optics spread the light wide in the voids in the walls and also focus it to the sides in the room and also to the outside. This means that there is very little scattered light inside the building, which in turn helps create a pleasant atmosphere and ensures that people are not disturbed by the built-in spotlights. DMX control enables dynamic lighting sequences to be created. It is these sequences that are helping to turn the building into a sightseeing attraction.

via: ledonlighting.com
Fotos: Eduard Hueber

The International Lighting Design Index collects the innovators and leading heads together with their current projects to present the contemporary technology-driven trends.
via: luminapolis.com
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OPENINGS is an interactive storefront installation, built into the façade of the Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE) gallery in Hollywood. Located at a border condition between the urban context of Hollywood Blvd. and the art gallery environment of LACE, OPENINGS uses architectural strategies and interactive media to address these two seemingly disparate zones. This project was developed during David Erdman’s UCLA Department of Architecture and Urban Design Superficial Superglow v2 winter quarter 2008 technology seminar and will be included in the forthcoming publication Contemporary Plasticity.

A system of modular vacuum-formed panels, LCD displays, and LED lights is built into both the interior and exterior sides of the LACE storefront wall. The white LEDs glow in intensity according to the motion and proximity of pedestrians on Hollywood Blvd’s ‘Walk Of Fame’. LCDs on the exterior side of the wall show animated text describing art exhibits culled from the 30-year history of LACE, while LCDs on the interior show text derived from artist Douglas McCulloh’s project ‘60,000 Photographs in Hollywood’ describing and quoting various characters encountered on Hollywood Blvd.

OPENINGS functions as the active membrane between two zones on either side of the storefront wall, pulling Hollywood Blvd. into LACE gallery and pulling LACE gallery onto the street.

Andrea Boeck and Jihyun Kim are recent graduates of the UCLA Departments of Architecture + Urban Design and Design | Media Arts, respectively. Justin Lui is a current student of the UCLA Department of Design | Media Arts, and a graduate of the UCLA Department of Architecture + Urban Design.

via: archinect.com
Photos: Darrin Little

fLUX, binary waves is an urban and cybernetic installation based on the measuring of infrastructural ( passengers, cars…) and communicational ( electromagnetic fields produced by mobile phones, radio…) flows and their transposition into luminous, sonic and kinetic rules. This relation between the installation and the urban activity happens in real time and sets each person as an element of the installation, as a centre of the public realm.

The installation fLUX, binary waves is constituted by a network of 32 rotating and luminous panels of 3 meter-high and 60 centimetres wide, placed every 3 meters to form a kinetic wall. The panels rotate around their vertical axis, and have a black reflective surface on one side, the other being plain mat white. Their rotation is controlled by microprocessors, allowing to determine precisely the rotation speed and angle, while their networking allows to synchronise the movement of the 32 panels. The microprocessors are connected to infrared sensors, capturing the surrounding infrastructural flows, defining the frequency and amplitude of the rotation. According to this set up, each impulse is transmitted from one panel to the other, describing visual waves running from one side of the installation to the other, and then bouncing back while progressively loosing oscillation. All these principles relate the ‘micro-events’ happening in the area to a unified play of light, colours and sounds directly derived from the rhythm of the city flows. As such, the installation proposes an urban sign having as subject the ‘urban’ and as message to be a catalyst of urbanity via the transcription of urban flows in a contemporary play of kinetics, lights and sound.

Binary Waves by LAb[au] from The Nonsense Society on Vimeo.

via:lab-au.com , Info-PDF