Thoughts about Media Architecture and our work at mediafacade.net

| View | Upload your own

This is my presentation at the Media Architecture Conference in London in Sept. 2007. with voice and better image quality.
If you want to see the presentation full screen go here and press icon “full”.
Below there’s the presentation in text form:

Let me start with some remarks on the term Media Architecture:

I think the actual reason for talking about Media Architecture or mediatecture or interactive architecture or whatever other terms we might use, is that we make new observations. We see new forms of displays on buildings and with our knowledge about recent technical developments in mind, we start to have visions and theories about the chances and risks of this development.

The bottom line is that we have to ask ourselves whether a specific term or discourse brings us closer in exchanging observations. It should help us to understand what’s going on and to find suitable means for solutions

This is probably best illustrated by showing some of our observations and explaining what I mean when I talk about Media Architecture. A bit later I want to talk about the challenges that arise in the course of projects and what we as a research group want to contribute as solutions.

So let’s have a look at some of the projects.

Let me start with some observations about different types of relationships between the media content and the building:

In most cases we have classical advertising or news content with no relation to the building: Often clips or images that were originally produced for TV or the Internet are shown on a display. In most cases there’s no relation between the media content and the building at all.

Secondly we have customised displays with customised content, such as in the case of the Coca Cola display at Picadilly Circus. There’s a relation between the form of the display and the building, but there’s no relation between the media content and the building.

And thirdly there are projects whose content have a relation to the building and the situation in town and where the display also corresponds with the building; such as in the case of Uniqua Building in Vienna.

There are also differences with respect to what kind of technology is used in the installation:
Blinken Lights, one the first and most important examples in this area, was done with simple halogen lamps.

Fluorescent lamps are used in the installations by Realities United: BIX at Kunsthaus Graz and Spots Façade at Potsdamer Platz in Berln.
Allianz Arena is another project where fluorescent lamps were used.
The major part of the installations - like in these examples from Shanghai - use LED. The reason for this is simply that LED offer a unique light density. It is the only technology that allows displays bright enough to compete with sun light.

And finally there are differences in how the display is integrated into the building, especially with respect to transparency:

In many cases, like in these examples from Times Square, the display forms a separate layer apart from the building. Light sources cover large parts of the building. LEDs are housed in boxes and they entirely obscure those parts of the building that are behind the display.

The Lehmann Brothers building in New York was an approach that integrated LED tiles directly into the façade.

The next step was to put LEDs in extrusions, such as in this example for t-mobile. The big advantage is that the image is visible, but you can see through the display and get daylight into the building.

The Chanel building in Tokyo used a similar approach, but in this case transparency was not the main goal. It was enough to make the façade translucent during the daytime – but it is not possible to see through it.
In the evening when the display is lit, blinds are rolled down in order to prevent irritating the employees
Finally, there are displays that are integrated in the façade structure of the building such as in the case of Uniqua.
The display is translucent and transparent, but it was added after the building was finished.

You can take a look at mediaarchtiecture.org to find more information about most of the projects mentioned here.

We as a research group have a similar approach like in the unique project. We are in the process of developing solutions where LEDs are integrated into the façade structure, in order to let sunlight into the building and let people look out of it.

In the next step I’d like to sketch a brief overview of the various challenges that arise when such projects are planned and built. For that purpose I have drawn a keyword cloud:

Around the centre occupied by the terms media and architecture, I see four main topics that seem to be most influential.
First of all, in most cases Media Architectures have the form of a building, or at least a spatial structure.
Then, each project shows a specific content that should correspond with the type of display used, which immediately raises a series of technical questions.
And finally, most larger projects require permits from the city administration and should take important aspects of urban planning into consideration.
Each of these four topics are mutually interrelated and need to be included in the process of design.

Let’s dig a bit deeper into these four topics:
As urban planning plays a special role in this field I’d like to begin there:
Questions that arise in this area include cultural heritage, light pollution, traffic and the involvement of neighbours. These are all questions that are not usually answered by the design team alone, but generally in cooperation with the city administration, residents, and experts in the field. I think it is very important not to see them as a mere handicap, but as a creative challenge to be solved in cooperation with others.

It requires a culture of discourse, and we hope that we can contribute to this kind of culture during this conference.

Whereas urban planning seems to define a project by constraints and edge conditions, the three others can largely be decided by the building owner and within the design team:
The form of content – whether it is video or stills or animations - still might be regulated by the city administration, but the choice of themes and plots is largely up to designers and raises a cascade of questions, like
what kind of content needs which kind of resolution and brightness?
What is the viewing distance? What are the perfect viewing angles?
Is it affordable and feasible to show content during daylight or only from dusk till dawn? And so on.

Probably the most important decision affects the relation between the display and the building:
Does the display need to be transparent?
In which parts of the building should the light sources be integrated?
Can the Media Content be coordinated with the lighting inside?
Should it go with the form of the building?
How does it look when it’s turned off? And so on.

Bearing that in mind, a stipulative definition of Media Architecture could be as follows:
Buildings and spatial structures should only be considered Media Architecture if there’s an intended and generally recognisable correspondence between the display, its content and the structure of the building. Both media and architecture should not represent two separate levels of meaning, but they should form a common system of reference and refer to each other.

However, the relation between the content and the display structure on the one hand and the building structure on the other seems to be the actual challenge of Media Architecture and each project tries to find its specific correspondence.

In this relation technology should play the role of the enabler providing the design team with the right means to create a specific tension between the media and the architecture component of the project. It provides solutions by giving the right answers to questions like the integration of the display into the façade systems, cabling, maintenance and so forth.

This short overview of the field of Media Architecture should be sufficient to make clear that it touches upon different disciplines and a large number of challenges that cannot be solved independently from one another.
I personally don’t believe that a single provider or even a single person is able to cover the whole field and solve all the different problems arising from it.
I think it’s a key factor of success to find the right team with the right mix of know-how.

The group that I represent consists of five different companies and research institutions, with almost no overlapping spheres of competence.

We have AluKönigStahl, a leading provider in aluminium and steel extrusions, that is able to design special extrusions that go together with widely spread façade systems like Schüco and Jansen.

Then there’s Peter Cornwell’s company Blip, which has a lot of expertise related to LED-Installations and many years of experience in setting up and maintaining large outdoor projects like the CocaCola Display in Picadilly Circus.

The third partner is the Institute for Computer Technology from the Technical University in Vienna, a leading expert and developer of solutions for building automation.

The Austrian office Architektur Consult covers the aspect of architecture. Archconsult is involved in a number of flagship buildings like the t-mobile headquarters in Vienna and the new tower for the European Central Bank in Frankfurt. You will get more information about these projects in the next presentation by Thomas Schwed.

And finally there’s my company “realitylab”, which conducts the research management for the project. We have 15 years of experience in interaction design, and our focus in this project is on the aspect of visualisation and light simulation.

In the solution that we are currently developing within the consortium, we integrate the led-sources seamlessly into the façade structure.

What does that mean?
First of all, it means that there are particular aluminium extrusions that house particular led sources, which are both especially produced for the purpose of making media façades. The extrusions clip onto existing Schüco components, a widely used façade system.
The integration into the façade system offers a lot of advantages:

1. Cabling can be completely hidden and protected. Sensitive equipment like power supplies and controllers can be inside the building in order to facilitate maintenance
2. The components are designed so that it is easy to replace them when they are broken
3. We are currently developing a series of extrusions for different positions on the façade. As you can see in the façade model outside, we are ready to integrate LEDs into the cover caps of mullions. The next step will be to integrate them into other parts like sun protections and façade covers in the outside area of the parapet.
4. The development of standardised components enables Architects to consider the planning of media façades at an early stage.
5. And finally, it looks far better if the display is fully integrated in the building. The display can be more or less invisible when turned off.

The display integrated into the building can be managed like any other display via web access.

It is easy to program in advance and to feed in live material whenever needed.

In order to meet the special requirements of Media Architecture we are developing a special interface between the display management system and the building automation system.
As you can see in this example - on the right side - the display content interferes with the pattern of room lights inside the building. On the left hand there seems to be a blind between the display and the light coming from the interior.
An interface between the display and the building automation allows for special effects like dimming the light inside the building or moving the sun blinds on the façade.
But the interface should also work the other way around: telling the display system that a certain event in the building has happened, for example that more than 1000 Persons are in the building, and changing the content accordingly.
Further research is needed to find out in which circumstances this technology can be applied usefully without affecting people working in the building, but basically we see it as an opportunity to give the building a special identity and vividness. Thomas Rausch and Bernhard Breinbauer, from ICT are present. They brought a demo that illustrates what building automation might do for Media Architecture projects.

Finally, the consortium covers expertise in planning and simulating Media Architecture…
Generally we see two forms of visualisation:
- Visualisations for design purposes. Testing different forms of content and different grids of LEDs like in this example. These kinds of visualisations are useful within the design process and for communicating ideas.
- On the other hand there is a strong need for photorealistic renderings that may serve as basis for the actual investment decisions. An investor should get a realistic image of how bright the display will be and what kind of effects can be reached under different light conditions in the environment. That could also be useful when talking with city administration.

Our group has been working together for a year now, and this is the first presentation of our cooperation to a larger audience. Later in the brake please take a look at the façade demo outside. We are currently producing a test installation that will be tested under different climate conditions during the next months and in a year or maybe a bit earlier we should be ready to do installations on real buildings. In the next presentation, Thomas Schwed from Architektur Consult, who also participates in our group, will introduce you –among other things - to the Styria project in Austria, which is already in the phase of intense planning and serves as a use case for our developments.

Gernot Tscherteu