The history of Olympics and Expos is one of heaviness– of mass and monumentality and conspicuous expenditure on immovable objects whose legacy has occasionally endured, but have always been outdated. Our most extraordinary contemporary feats of engineering are more stealthy, more extensive and more invisible than these traditions of glass and brickand steel: Code rather than Carbon.

The Cloud proposes a new form of monument – a new form of collective expression and experience, and an updated symbol of our dawning age. It proposes an entirely new form of observation deck, high above the Olympics – from which one can not only see the whole of London, but the whole of the world, immersed in the euphoric gusts of weather but also immersed within that new, pressing and endlessly compelling environment in which we increasingly congregate – the digital sublime.

The principal effects of the Cloud are generated from their context – from the aerial sea of swarming data, from the diverse populations of London, the UK and the wider string of global villages, and from the seamless stretch of weather that unites us all. The structure is comprised of a filigree central array of columns – servicing as circulation systems dropping from the sky like the tendrils of a banyan tree system.

The inflatables are saturated with an LED information system which densifies locally into lightweight info-screen hotspots where visitors can navigate information about the immediate surroundings. The luminosity and air pressure of each sphere is independently controlled –– giving rise to the networked, self-organizing Cloud.

via: the CLOUD | www.raisethecloud.org

The Indemann was designed by the Maastricht architecture firm Maurer United Architects as a symbol of the structural-political evolution of the former mining region near Inden. This 36 meter high, accessible steel sculpture, built on a brown coal dump, resembles in its form a primitive robot. The Indemann gets its unique brightness from Illumesh® – a semitransparent skin made of stainless steel mesh with interwoven LED profiles by GKD – Gebrüder Kufferath AG. During the day, the metallic surface shimmers and reflects light, then at night a computer-controlled light show comes to life. The worldwide patented system is a cooperative product of GKD and ag4 media facade GmbH, Cologne. The Indemann is the first public project in Germany where Illumesh® is in use. After the spectacular dress rehearsal at the beginning of August, which attracted already over 2.500 spectators, the official inauguration of the steel colossus is on September 5th.
The specially by ag4 developed and tailored show represents the transition of a changing cultural landscape and forms the basis for the atmospheric dense, smoothly shifting color and light patterns changes, as a symbol of the transformation from coal mining area towards a research-, educational and recreational region.

via: gkd.de, wikipedia.org

Honda Insight – Let It Shine from Honda on Vimeo.

by Wieden + Kennedy Amsterdam

Walk around the place du Molard in Geneva, Switzerland, and you’ll be walking on stars. Two thousand LED light sources equipped with 10 000 white Power TOPLEDs have been set into the paving stones. As the sun begins to set, the LEDs begin to shine, giving the square a magical aura.
When the Place du Molard was renovated, it was paved with cobble stones, identical to those which one already finds in the city center. Two thousand resin paving stones have been set in between, covering half a percent of the surface of the place. At nightfall the LED illuminated paving stones begin to shine, reproducing the shine and the silver-colored reflections of the Lake Geneva. The illuminated paving stones accumulate when approaching the lake and remind at the twinkling water, which penetrated up to this place in former times.

The two thousand resin paving stones are lucent during daytime, but become luminescent at nightfall. On each of the cobble stones simple words of everyday life are engraved, for example “hello”, “good night” or “welcome”, written in nine languages and symbolizing the multi-cultural character of Geneva. This installation underlines the pedestrian character and the history of the Place du Molard. Moreover the place takes account of the needs of the various users, such as pedestrians, tradesmen, florists, café owners and their guests.

via: osram-os.com, ims-ag.ch

Inspired by the theme “The Green Man” architecture students Manuel Kretzer and Hans Sachs designed “The Cone”, an accessible dynamic structure. At night 700 LEDs from OSRAM Opto Semiconductors turned “The Cone” into a shining, rotating sculpture, visible from almost every point of the festival. The sculpture was built with two cones made of PVC-tubes, which were set on top of each other with the outer cone designed to rotate to create energy. The 8 meters high interior cone was mounted stationary on the platform and the 9 meters high exterior cone was fastened to the interior cone. Through the use of wind energy and human force the rotating sculpture produced energy for the nocturnal illumination.

The sculpture was illuminated by 700 green 5mm LEDs emitting light into the PVC-tubes. Reflectors were used to achieve the required narrow radiation. At night visitors to the interior of the sculpture could admire the fascinating effect of the overlap of the rod structures and the resulting continuous dance of shadow plays and light.

LEDs from OSRAM Opto Semiconductors were chosen to illuminate the artwork due to their robust nature and bright illumination. Moreover their small size made the LEDs ideal for the coupling into the PVC-tubes. During the festival the LEDs had to withstand temperature changes from 5°C at night to up to 45°C at noon. Heat, sandstorms and heavy winds were also challenges.

The “Burning Man Festival” is one of the largest art gatherings in North America. Each year at the end of August the festival takes place in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, approximately 150 km north-east of Reno. In 2007 more than 45,000 people erected the 16km2 large artificial Black Rock City, which disappeared at the end of the festival without a trace.

via: osram-os.com, burning-man.eu

Twelve shimmering metal shafts rise at surprising angles from a grassy hill. They hang over the landscape, creating a graceful curve that appears to unfold for passing motorists. The shafts are part of Solar Collector, a sculpture created by artists Matt Gorbet, Rob Gorbet, and Susan LK Gorbet as a commission for the Region of Waterloo. Set in front of the Regional Operations Centre in Cambridge, Ontario, the sculpture is solar-powered and interactive, inviting the community to choreograph its nightly performance via the web.

Each shaft has three sets of lights, along with three solar panels. Their angles reflect the angles of the sun through the year. The tallest shaft is perpendicular to the sun at winter solstice, when the sun is low in the sky. The flattest shaft faces the high sun at summer solstice. During the day, the solar panels collect the sun’s energy in a battery within each shaft. At the same time, the Solar Collector website collects light compositions – patterns in light that are created by the community through a simple web interface.

The light patterns are based on sine waves – the mathematics behind sunlight and the seasons. Each night at dusk, a performance begins of all the compositions collected that day. After the day’s patterns are displayed, the performance moves on to a series of global patterns composed collaboratively from all the patterns ever created. The total length of the performance is a reflection of the weather and the seasons, as the shafts use up their energy and fade out late in the evening, one by one.

via: enlighter.org, solarcollector.ca, gorbetdesign.com

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

This is an example of an ephemeral 3D Media Architecture only existing for a blink of time – on the occasion of the opening of the new Palm Jumeirah in Dubai; fits perfectly as a start into the new year: We wish a glamorous 2009 to all our readers and friends!

Größere Kartenansicht

A great example by Gramazio & Kohler how christmas lights could look in future; Here’s a short description by the architects themselves:

” ‘Distinctive, generous, unique’—these were some of the qualities expected of the Christmas illuminations in Zurich’s internationally renowned shopping street. ….We designed a continuous band of lights, 1.1 km long, using 275 tubes of light, which we called “The World’s Largest Timepiece”.
In terms of urban planning, the installation connects the railway station to the lake. Its simple, linear course turns the band of light into the visual backbone of the city, accentuating the appearance of the Bahnhofstrasse and its two slight yet distinct changes in direction. …

Light Tubes
The 7 m high, round tubes had to provide light evenly in all directions, and be able to withstand heavy windloads despite being light in weight. We therefore had to find a rigid, robust casing material that would also transmit light.
Eventually we chose wound glass fibre technology: a special manufacturing process in which glass fibres are soaked in resin and spun around a mandrel. We were fascinated by the additive logic of this process. The winder controls the stacking of the fibres via two computer-coordinated movements. A sliding carriage drives the glass fibres back and forth along the spinning mandrel, creating an extremely stable multi-layered tube. The stacking winder and the number of tiers and overlappings determine the rod’s flexural rigidity and torsional stiffness, as well as its transmission of light. …
The final tube was 7 m long and 15 cm in diameter, but its shell was only 2 mm thick; including the lighting and control technology, it weighed just under 23 kg. Intense engagement with the computer-operated production process allowed us to integrate two normally incongruent requirements into a single material, thus using wound glass fibres for lighting on this scale for the first time.

Xmas Generator
During the Christmas season the Bahnhofstrasse is illuminated for eight hours every night, with a constant flow of changing light sequences. Designing this 320-hour urban environment was an innovative, exciting and demanding task that stretched the classic architectural repertoire to include the algorithmic design of time-based sequences.
Thus the lights are “played” by custom software that controls the 8,800 LED bulbs in real time. We designed the parameters and rules of the algorithm to be potentially unlimited. The installation’s distinctive identity is conferred by the constant creation of new, unpredictable light patterns. Movement sensors affect the design and reflect what is going on below. But the Christmas lighting responds to people on the street gently and quietly, without overemphasising its interactivity.”

video by scharzpictures.com
via: gramaziokohler.com

Urban Alliance´s mission is to integrate modern communication technologies in the built environment in order to create interactive public spaces and objects. Urban Alliance combines expertise in design, content production, engineering and construction. This way UA is a one-stop-shop for tun-key mediatecture solutions. Urban Alliance works for developers, governments, advisers and architects on projects indoors and outdoors for purposes as city marketing, social safety and arts.

via: www.urbanalliance.nl
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