Façades Today: As Screens and in Motion

With the largest LED media façade in India just having been installed at the Mondeal Square building at Ahmedabad, we could now be witnessing the advent of mediatecture in the country. The architects Blocher and Blocher India Pvt. Ltd. have designed this building as two unequal ellipses which point at each other towards the corner of the plot in plan to reveal two possible elevational views to the two abutting roads respectively. The design involved developing the architecture of these two façades in tandem with the lighting design such that the final visual presented an integrated picture. This perfect tango between art and technology was achieved by the lighting solution provider AHL applying their D32 Media Tubes aligned discreetly along the diagonal members of the façade grid (developed by BES Consultants) and Atelier DADA programming the lighting design and the video content. The façade envelope developed by BES has a system of vertical struts and horizontal panes which provide shaded openings taking care of daylighting and ventilation to tackle the sustainability issue. The result is mediatecture at its best creating a stunning and dynamic nocturnal façade involving moving light-scapes and silhouettes.

As is evident, this synchronisation of art and technology in a media façade involves and integrates the expertise of several agencies. Depending on whether a media screen is being applied to an existing building or is being integrated into the building right from the stage of conceptualisation or planning, the technologies as well as the players may differ. Lighting solution providers, lighting technology providers, lighting design programmers, media content developers along with façade/ building envelope consultants and engineers are required to team up with architects and structural consultants to come up with a well-integrated final product.

The attributes to be addressed and fulfilled in the erection of any media façade are multifarious, broadly classifiable as display technology, image properties, façade integration, translucence, permanence, dimensionality, luminosity, sustainability, interactive level, artistic quality and aptness of content. Several options have been developed by technology providers for installations of varying degrees of requirement of these attributes.  The technology available to achieve these attributes ranges from computer controlled simple fluorescent tubes placed behind translucent outer facades to highly advanced and integrated, programmed fibre optic membranes. The range is so mind bogglingly vast and developing so fast that there is a real risk of a technology that is applied to a project turning obsolete by the time it is installed.

While technology takes care of the actualisation of a concept, an equal emphasis also rests on the content of the display. It is extremely important to develop content that is in tune with the aesthetic sensitivities and social fabric of the location where it is played, and is also representative of the ethos of the building and its contents. It is always to be borne in mind that mediatecture is at great variance from advertising signboards or giant LED video screens, that there is an aesthetic and ethical promise to be kept with the viewer on the street. And, of course, in this day and age where the planet is consumed by the concerns of excessive consumption, the energy consumed by the installation and its consequent sustainability also is a primary issue.      

Of course, the transition to the next level has been made from light displays to mechanical displays, i.e. facades that actually move! In fact, media surfaces actually began with a mechanical display surface created by a team of architects, engineers, mathematicians and programmers. Reflective metallic plates mounted on pneumatic movers covered the façade and displayed as natural flowing patterns the movements of the crowds around in real time, which were fed to it as electronic input. Jean Nouvel’s 'Institute du Monde Arabe' has a mechanical façade of latticed windows integrated into its building façade, such that the camera aperture like blinds of the lattice adjust their opening size in reaction to solar glare to control the optimisation of daylight and shade inside the building. 

Further excitement was created in the field at the venue of the winter Olympics at Sochi in 2014 with the installation of a kinetic façade called ‘MegaFaces Pavillion’. Also nicknamed the ‘world’s first selfie building’, this (temporary) installation by London designer Asif Khan creates 8 m high 3D images of up to 3 faces at a time on the façade of the pavilion using the same technology of electronically fed and programmed pneumatic movers, which are lighted glass tubes called actuators here, extendable up to 2 metres in length from the façade and covered with a stretchable translucent membrane. Any of the 170,000 visitors to the games could peep into one of the photo booths to have 5 pictures of his or her face taken from different angles to be developed into a 3D computer model, which would then be projected on the façade for 20 seconds along with 2 others, after which the facade would morph into the next 3 faces!

Images: cover. images 1 - 3 : Mondeal Square, Ahmedabad; Images 4, 5 - NYC Port Authority Bus Terminus; Images 6 - Natinal Stadium Warsaw, Poland; 7,8 - Flame Towers, Baku, Azerbaijan; Image 9 - longest media facade in the world, taman Angrekk, jakarta; Image 10 : Aegis Hyposurface; Image 11, 12 - 'Institute du Monde Arabe; Images 13 - 15 : MegaFaces Pavilion, Sochi.