Media architecture compendium

Media Architecture Compendium Digital Placemaking Luke Hespanhol M. Hank Haeusler Martin Tomitsch Gernot Tscherteu

DEFINITIONS /

Media Architecture – Architecture in the Second Machine Age?

BY M. HANK HAEUSLER

Associate Professor M. Hank

“Isn’t it the same as Christmas lights on buildings what you are doing in your

Haeusler, PhD is Discipline

research?” (Academic colleague, 2009)

Director of Computational

Seen from an outside perspective one could tend to agree with this statement as

Design at Australian School

both, Christmas trees and media facades, are not that dissimilar – a few lights,

of Architecture + Design at

some cables, a content that is often pre-programmed and more often, a not so

the University of New South Wales, Sydney; Director of the MAI Australasia and known as researcher, educator, entrepreneur and designer in media architecture and computational design through over 50 publications.

successful integration into architecture. But I beg to differ. A little bit later, from 2010 onwards, I made a more favourable comparison of media architecture with the smart phone, as both – media architecture and a smart phone – are objects with a screen. But this would do a smart phone not enough justice, as it is far more than a screen: it is arguably the one item that represents most of all current societal changes. Exponential growth of computing power with Moore’s law, Internet of Things (IoT), digitalised information, user-generated data, or Artificial Intelligence, all these General Purpose Technologies (GPT), are not only the backbone of smart

phones but have changed - and will even more so in the future - how we work, choose our partners, communicate with our friends and make our decisions [1]. And all this does not possibly influence architecture and the built environment? Hardly not! As media architecture, since its early days, has adopted several GPT features, I want to propose that media architecture is a precursor for architecture in the second machine age, and digital placemaking is a new field of enquiry to understand how GPT that define the second machine age, interact with social, cultural, economic challenges in the built environment. In the following, I briefly want to introduce the second machine age before discussing steps necessary for media architecture to ‘become’ (I have on purpose used ‘become’ instead of ‘be’) architecture in the second machine age.

Brynolfsson and McAfee [1] outline that GPT such as the combustion engine and electricity with its consequential inventions have drastically transformed our workforce in the first machine age in the late 19th and early 20th century.

A similar statement could be offered for architecture in this period. Typologies such as high-rise buildings (only possible due to elevators [2] – hence engines either combustion or electric), transformations from medieval urban settings to the ‘car friendly city’ [3] (combustion engine), or spatial design (greater building depth only possible through electric light) are all the result of the First Machine Age GPT. These examples and many more are arguably

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DEFINITIONS / M. HANK HAEUSLER

in direct relation to inventions of the first machine age. The Second Machine Age is defined by Brynolfsson and McAfee [1] as the ones listed when outlining that smart phones are more than just screens. These GPT are normally not the focus of the architecture profession but for media architecture, as it always had to be connected to other disciplines such as computer science, human-computer interaction, electronic engineering, or art disciplines in order to create and build even the simplest media facade in terms of technology and content. How can media architecture ‘become’ architecture of the second machine age? I want to use again the analogy of a smartphone, but this time using hardware, operating system and applications to point out three topics. Firstly, the need for architecture to be assembled and disassembled. Secondly, the need of an urban operating system. Third, and lastly, applications and how buildings out of their typology can generate applications, as digital information layer in the form of visual content.

Each of the three topics will conclude with an observation.

Architectural hardware in the second machine age needs modularity Different life cycles of architecture and second machine age GPT cause issues for architecture, and an example I want to refer to at this point is the Internet fridge. A main concern, in my opinion, relates to the different life cycles of the digital components used in the fridge as well as smart phone (2 years on average) [4] and the life cycle of the fridge (14 years on average) [5]. To overcome the two different lifecycles, architecture in the second machine age needs to become modularised and architecture components with embedded second machine age GPT must not be permanently fixed together, but can be disassembled and replaced in order to address different life cycles. Google’s Project Ara phone [6] is a good conceptual example for this way of thinking. Even discontinued [7], it presents an interesting concept of only replacing out-dated parts – e.g. the camera – and keeping the rest until their cycle ends to then replace them. But does such an approach work as well in architecture where most parts are permanently fixed due to glue and other bonding agents used? I would argue yes, if architects are willing to shift the way they design and construct buildings. Here the R128 house by Werner Sobek shows that this is possible, “because of its assembly by means of mortice-and-tenon joints and bolted joints, it cannot only be assembled and dismantled easily but is also completely recyclable” [8]. Thus, Observation One at this point: we need in the very near future buildings that are modularly assembled, as lifecycles differ between building materials and second machine age GPT. From iOS to uOS – an operating system for the city Naturally, all hardware within a smart phone needs to be connected through an Operating System (OS) to communicate to each other and to communicate to other external devices. In short, it is software that manages a computer, and helps to access the computer’s hardware resources via a dependable set of interfaces. Apple’s iOS allows the iPhone’s camera to be connected to the microphone but also allows the Apple Watch to be connected to the iPhone. Buildings equipped with second machine age GPT do not have an OS yet. Consequently, an urban operating system (uOS) is needed for architecture in the second machine age to connect all devices in the city to each other – and, most likely, architecture, engineering and construction industry are not the right industries to provide a uOS. Hence it may need to come from companies that can develop an OS, or potentially there is already an OS that can help. Some aspects point here at the time of writing towards Amazon’s ‘Alexa’. The blog stratechery.com argues 14

ANIMATED ARCHITECTURE /

Harpa Reykjavik REYKJAVIK, ICELAND 2011

Olafur Eliasson in collaboration

Opera buildings are often perceived as cultural landmarks. Their design and

with Henning Larsen Architects

construction therefore attracts attention from the public, often leading to challenges

Concept Design

in their realisation. Iconic contested examples are the Sydney Opera House and the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie. Similarly, the Harpa Concert Hall and Conference Centre had to overcome challenges during its construction. Situated at the harbour of Reykjavik, the construction of the building was halted during the 2008 Icelandic financial crisis and only recommenced after receiving additional investment from the government.

The building’s exterior reflects Iceland’s characteristic local basalt landscape formation, which inspired the design team for the geometric facade structure. To achieve this design inspired by nature, the facade consists of a steel framework structure that is clad with the twelve-sided space-filling geometric modular system called the ‘quasi-brick’ and more than 1,000 quasi-bricks where used for the southern facade that faces the city. Through the arrangement of the glass panels via the quasi-brick formation the building appears like a kaleidoscopic play of colours during sunny days. At night, this effect is replicated through the use of LEDs. In order to develop these ideas, the team worked with three-dimensional computer models, finite element modelling, various digital visualisation techniques as well as maquettes, models and mock-ups. The remaining facades and the roof are made of sectional representations of this geometric system, resulting in two-dimensional flat facades of five and six-sided structural frames.

Through the use of the quasi-bricks the building starts to ‘dematerialise’ as a static entity and let it respond to the surrounding colours of the city lights, ocean and the glow of the sky. In this way, the expression of the facade changes according to the visual angle. With the continuously changing scenery, the building appears in an

Fig. 1: The Harpa Concert Hall and Conference Centre located at Reykjavik’s harbour © Daniel Lin

endless variation of colours, adding a dynamic placemaking layer to the harbour of Reykjavik.

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ANIMATED ARCHITECTURE / HARPA REYKJAVIK

Fig. 2: The building’s media facade creates a continuously changing scenery at Reykjavik’s harbour © Christian Barrette

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Theories

THEORIES /

Embracing Place: Grounding Technology Back into Context

BY ALESSANDRO AURIGI

Dr Alessandro Aurigi is

Debates on the relationship between our cities – their spaces and communities

Professor of Urban Design

– and the growing digital character of our society are not something new, and the

and Associate Dean Research

emergence of the internet in the mid 1990s greatly accelerated them for a while.

at the University of Plymouth.

Another acceleration of these is now taking place with a growing interest around

Alex has published “Making

the smart city concept. Visions of the inadequacy of sprawling, chaotic and de-

the Digital City and Augmented Urban Spaces” (Ashgate), and a new forthcoming volume on smart cities with Katharine Willis (Routledge).

He has also featured in various international journals.

humanising urban centres are often juxtaposed with the disruptive but potentially redeeming influence of high technology [1]. However, it is important to raise basic, critical questions that challenge technological deterministic views: are mechanical and functional interpretations of urbanity a correct paradigm for our cities? And can all our living and socialising environments be the same type of ‘machine’ where the same type of fix is applicable? The importance for urbanists and designers to deeply connect with context and frame digital interventions in the multi-layered diversity of place seems key.

To envisage credible trajectories of sustainability and resilience, context and place are crucial. If we admit that a vast number of cities across the globe is not positioned to be in the megalopoles’ competitive game of significantly and sufficiently attracting external capital and workforce, then the focus needs to shift to the local and specific. Most places need indeed to engage the ‘digital’ not by adopting global technological ‘solutions’, but through ideas leveraging local resources, people and wisdom, to facilitate endogenous, bespoke trajectories of resilience. This means moving towards a ‘grounded smart’ stemming from context as the main arena generating needs, collaboration, and design of any interventions.

Urban resilience calls for an emphasis on the uniqueness of places, rather than on general pret-a-porter smart city ‘solutionism’. Much critical and practical work has already gone into re-framing the development of digitally-enhanced places in more locally participated ways. This work ranges widely, from reflecting on the non-neutral, contested nature of urban analysis systems and dashboards [2], to critically analysing forms of grassroots or public-private action in locally relevant smart initiatives [3], to design projects associated with the work of the Media Architecture Institute and international networks fostering interactive installations, such as Bristol-based Playable City.

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THEORIES /

Redesigning the Design of Place

BY IAN MCARTHUR

A Senior Lecturer at UNSW Art

What is place in the digital age? What’s important? It’s not news that our everyday

& Design, Dr Ian McArthur is

urban journeys have become mediated by digital technologies. The information

a hybrid practitioner working

these tools generate eddies around us sculpting our daily itineraries, encounters,

in the domains of speculative

transactions and translations. Yet, within this empowering flow we find that

multidisciplinary practice,

opportunities to drift, pause, contemplate and appreciate one’s surroundings

transcultural collaboration and education change. His research explores urban space via experimental sonifications for responsive interactive media environments, architectural-scale data visualisations, public art installations and telematic sound art.

are fleetingly rare. As a citizen, navigating a city is not usually purposeless. Our appreciation and experience of place is as a passer-by, someone waiting for a bus or finding a parking space. Smartness hasn’t translated into a discernible enhancement of the humanity of place. To the contrary many experience a sense of alienation pervading and influencing our perceptions of the urban places we traverse.

The notion of smartness in the urban context has unfortunately been largely understood to be about the deployment of data driven systems, sensing and tracking technologies. The rapid proliferation of platforms such as the urban screen and media facade – media architecture – has influenced what cities mean and what they do and has also contributed to the branding of new urban precincts.

Although spectacular and hypnotic, as many have observed, the digital facade often becomes a dominating vehicle for advertising or bland broadcast programming.

This may be all too unsurprising but it is problematic because the potential of digital technologies to mediate richer interactions and experiences remains unrealised. In a world where more people than ever before reside in cities we must ask ourselves what kind of cities we want to live in and what kinds of places we want to create for ourselves.

I recently had the good fortune to visit Guzhen, a city in Guangdong, Southern China to deliver a keynote speech at the Global Lighting Designers Forum [1].

Guzhen’s reason for existing is lighting – most of the world’s lighting technologies are manufactured there. Here, I did have that fleetingly rare opportunity to wander

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THEORIES / IAN MCARTHUR

the expansive crowded boulevards of the city – pretty much the only foreigner I could see. Although this suggests the event was hardly global, everyone appeared extraordinarily happy – something one does not see a lot in my own city of Sydney, even during large festival events. I was struck by a deep sense of belonging that the throngs of locals seemed to radiate. Perhaps this was just a romantic rumination on the part of an outsider, or the enthusiasm of a populace thriving in the light of new economic prosperity. However, despite my ambivalence about smart city rhetoric, the responsive light installations deployed around the city certainly brought a warm, vibrant sense of place to Guzhen’s enormous greyness. Retiring that evening I felt distinctly that this pleasant yet paradoxically alien experience underscored and resonated with the ideas I had posed earlier that day to the audience of industrial and urban designers, architects, government officials and lighting industry representatives.

In my keynote, I had emphasised the relationship between digital technologies, light and social wellbeing as a way to frame and understand the underlying themes of, not only the lighting forum, but also the broader challenge of digital placemaking. This is not exactly an unprecedented notion in China. At Beijing Design Week’s Geocity Smart City International Information Design Exhibition [2] at the China Millennium Monument Museum of Digital Art in 2012, curator Yang Lei’s thematic “The Dao of Being Smart” framed the smart city as a form that should lead to an ultimate lift in social well-being as well as harmony between society and nature.

Looking back at my presentation, although absolutely sincere in my own intent, I have a lingering and uneasy sense of imposter syndrome. The links between culture and light are undoubtedly brighter in Chinese life. Guzhen’s vivid utilisation and appreciation of sculptural and interactive lighting as a means to create a sense of place and wellbeing should not have been surprising. Light used in rituals and cultural traditions such as puppetry and shadow play have always held an important place in China’s traditions and today they manifest within its transformational urban vision.

Naïve Western assumptions aside, the questions remain… What are the dialogic, conversational, discursive, participatory and expressive potentials of responsive digital light in our cities? When framed as a design problem such questions lead me to contemplate how interactive media platforms and light might harmonise relations between people and between people and urban places. The Canadian architect and urban planner Arthur Erickson [3] observed that it is “with light that we can bring soul and spirit back into architecture and perhaps find our soul in the process…” As the fabric of the built environment – the materiality of place in urban contexts – can be characterised by architectural form, Erickson’s statement implies that light has an essence that can communicate to us in a way that is meaningful, mesmerising and ultimately transformational.

John Wood speaks about the urgent need to “re-design” design and the need for us to think in more “joined-up” ways [4] about the way we live and by implication the way we design. The ongoing design of cities and ‘digital places’ is complex and ambiguously wicked. Globally we have looked to digital technologies for easy answers. Hopefully we have passed the euphoria and hype around digital technologies, big data, the internet of things, responsive and locative media as a global panacea for urban complexity. That said, the capacity of digital technologies as a conduit 58

Money Architecture

As can be inferred from the title, representation of economical status plays the primary role in this category, hence projects often come out of three rather different fields of application: banks and insurance companies; shopping centre’s; and casinos. Naturally all three applications serve the purpose of taking a prominent position within the cityscape by means of media facades. However, the way of doing so differs in each application.

In banking, representation is important, shopping centres might focus on glamour whereas casinos are all about the appealing visual flirtation à la slot machines. One could get the impression that all three areas are about ‘money in motion’ and that the moving light potentially represents this cash flow. Investigating and researching in media architecture for nearly two decades now we observed that following an initial ‘media facade boom’ several financial institution withdrew after the Global Financial Crisis in 2008 from the initial media facade excess to sedated, less vivid designs. Brightness and dominance in the cityscape will remain but in the content slowness, sedateness, and understatement will prevail to radiate seriousness.

Shopping malls and casinos, in turn, have continued and one can see considerably more motion, colourfulness, and glamour. Here, one sees increasingly complex light effects – especially in the interior – which on the one hand go beyond an abstract projection and on the other have an illusion-like effect. Often opulent, content simulates a canopy of leaves, withdrawing clouds, to name but two. Here inevitably baroque churches come to mind and Money Architecture, similar to baroque churches, tends to produce simulacrum-like pseudo-images or rather pseudospatial structures. Similar to baroque churches, shopping centers and casinos remove people from their daily experiences and consciously aim at creating a specific mode of awareness – in this case, the final goal being to put customers into ‘shopping’ or ‘gambling’ mode.

MONEY ARCHITECTURE /

LAX - Tom Bradley International Terminal LOS ANGELES, UNITED STATES 2013

Daktronics Inc., MRA Interna-

Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) is the third-busiest airport in the United

tional, Smart Monkeys Inc.

States, serving more than 60 million passengers every year, including more than 8

Concept Design

million international travellers. Given that airports make most of their revenue not out of flying but retail and advertisement, media displays have always played an

Daktronics Inc., Electrosonic

important role in the design of airports. The Integrated Environmental Media System

Light Design

(IEMS) program at LAX uses some of the latest display technology and customdeveloped content to engage, entertain and inform travellers as they move through

Sardi Design, Moment Factory,

the airport’s Tom Bradley International Terminal.

Digital Kitchen Content

The IEMS includes six display segments: The Story Board is an array of eight individual 6-millimetre DVN video displays arranged in a 36.5-metre wide by

Daktronics Inc.

9.1-metre tall media wall in the Grand Hall, featuring themed images associated

Hardware

with L.A.’s creative industries. The impressive Time Tower is a four-sided enclosure of seamless 6-millimetre and 10-millimetre DVN video displays which surrounds a 22-metre central elevator. The Welcome Wall, which measures nearly 26-metre tall by 8-metre wide 6-millimetre DVN video display showing L.A.-themed messages as passengers transit between floors to continue with international processing. The Bon Voyage Wall, which leaves international travellers with a lasting L.A.-branded impression, has a 7-metre tall by 4-metre wide 6-millimetre DVN video display and the Destination Board, showing flight information along with destination-themed content, has a 23-metre wide by 4.5-metre tall 6-millimetre DVN video display. The North and South Portals complete this series with sixty LCD monitors arranged into ten columns to form segmented media walls on both sides of the entrance portals leading from the Grand Hall to the concourses and departure gates.

Building upon the thematic elements of travel, the content shown on these integrated high-resolution displays fulfils the airport’s goal of “transforming the

Fig. 1: LAX features six media installations, each using a unique combination of display technologies and media content © Daktronics Inc.

traveller experience”. While promoting the LAX host brand as the creative capital of the world, the integrated display content also includes the opportunity for sponsor messages as part of the creative content display.

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MONEY ARCHITECTURE / LAX - TOM BRADLEY INTERNATIONAL TERMINAL

Fig. 2: The ‘Bon Voyage’ wall presents international travellers with media impressions as they leave the terminal © Daktronics Inc. Fig. 3: The concourse features a series of sixty LCD monitors arranged into ten columns to form segmented media walls on both sides of the entrance portals © Daktronics Inc.

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3 Fig. 4: The ‘Story Board’ includes eight individual displays arranged in a 36.5-meter wide by 9.1-meter tall media wall © Daktronics Inc.

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Participatory Architecture & Urban Interaction

Participatory Architecture and Urban Interaction projects provide an interactive interface, which allows participants to interact with the building or installation and thus with the residents of a city.

Designers of projects from this category must understand how to enable a potentially large crowd to interact with the building or installation through a series of input methods. Projects from this category therefore have the potential to set positive impulses for the social fabric of cities – such as establishing a positive sense of community or a ‘we-feeling’, which could fight a city’s latent tendencies of social distance and marginalisation.

Protagonists from this category face two broad challenges when it comes to digital placemaking. Firstly, media displays in inner-city areas are often linked to commercial interests and social agendas therefore face barriers to implementation. Secondly, adding participatory aspects has an impact on the content being displayed, potentially affecting the value of communication through an inflation of options for communication.

Projects in this category reach a level of complexity as their purpose is not only the production of a certain artefact or media content but also to create a balanced communicative interface which contains various interactive gadgets and their aligned patterns of behaviour. Thus, one not only has to overcome a series of technical challenges but also the basic problem that human behaviour and social patterns can only be predicted and planned to a certain extent.

This category is not limited to media facades but also expands to the use of social media platforms in an urban environment, in which the interaction takes place. People’s behaviour and interactions between people is more important than the physical representations, as it is a creative frame for new forms of interaction and interactions should not be reduced to a limited set of desired behavioural patterns.

Methods

METHODS /

Tools and Approaches to Support Collaborative Digital Placemaking in Media Architecture

BY PETER DALSGAARD

Dr Peter Dalsgaard is an

Although media architecture is still a nascent discipline, many initial projects and

Associate Professor of

research contributions indicate that it holds great potential for supporting how we

Interaction Design at Aarhus

create and maintain meaningful and thriving public spaces – or, in other words, for

University. He heads the

supporting placemaking. However, if media architecture is to live up to its promise

Digital Creativity Lab and the

in shaping meaningful public places, we need to understand and develop tools

research projects CoCreate, Creative Tools, and PLACED, which focus on understanding how digital tools influence creative work processes, and developing digitally enhanced tools and spaces that help people create and innovate.

that support collaborative digital placemaking. Being a new discipline, we are only beginning to understand which tools are viable and suitable for this purpose. In this chapter, I will therefore discuss where we stand in terms of understanding the particular issues that we face when we develop media architecture, which tools we currently have at hand, and how and why we need to develop new tools to better support co-creation and placemaking in media architecture.

The need for new tools and approaches to support digital placemaking Designing media architecture entails a series of challenges. On the most concrete level, there are technical challenges, e.g. finding or developing the proper input and output technologies that are durable and reliable enough to become an embedded part of our built environment. A second type of challenge has to do with designing the interface and content of media architecture, e.g. developing ways for people to interact with interactive components of architecture and creating types of content they can understand and relate to. And on a more complex level still, the challenge is to bring these concerns – technical infrastructure, interface, and content – into unity so they form a whole that is meaningful within the socio-cultural context into which they are placed. While the first concerns form the necessary foundation, the latter is paramount when we deal with placemaking.

In early research contributions [1, 2], my colleagues and I described the diversity of design challenges that media architecture developers face. Building on a number of real-life cases in which designers have developed different types of media

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Practice

PRACTICE /

Urban Screens as a Nexus for a Digital Placemaking Approach towards Civic Space

BY GLENN HARDING AND EMMA SHEARMAN

Glenn Harding is a founding Director of the Digital

The research in our professional practice [1] was born out of our engagement in

Placemaking Institute and

drafting the original audience engagement and technology strategy for Federation

Managing Director of Urban

Square cultural precinct [2] in Melbourne in 2004. Fed Square has arguably become

Screen Productions. He

the most successful example of a digital placemaking installation of its kind in the

consults widely to government

world. After drafting this initial strategy, we continued to be engaged by Federation

and cultural agencies, and works with universities supporting collaborative research projects and the development of campus digital placemaking strategies.

Square, under contract, to manage these platforms including programming the urban screens for the first six years from the precinct’s launch. Our engagement included establishing most of the existing technical and broadcast systems and interactive platforms including launching Australia’s first free public Wi-Fi, implementing leading edge digital wayfinding, digital signage, facade projections and countless other interactive and art installations while also initiating numerous research projects.

Since its launch, Fed Square has entertained over 100 million visitors and has been named the sixth best public square of the world playing host to over 2,000 cultural festivals, exhibitions and events every year, often attracting event attendance in the thousands. The tremendous success of Federation Square coupled with the convergence of a number of other social and political factors in Australia, including an early adopter mindset, Australia’s global pre-eminence in adopting a ‘place’ led

Emma Shearman is Operations

approach to its urban planning, and a conducive outdoor lifestyle, have all led to a

Director for Urban Screen

proliferation of these digital civic engagement platforms. The level of adoption and

Productions, Regional Director

consistent rate of growth of independently run non-commercial urban screens in the

for Women in Digital and

public space remains a phenomenon quite unique to Australia.

Treasurer for the Digital Placemaking Institute. She has a diverse professional background focused on policy, strategy and process development with extensive

One of the reasons for Federation Square’s unparalleled success, when many others have failed, is their approach to place governance and their early adoption of a civic and cultural charter that included a long-term commitment to the necessary funding to support that charter.

project management and production expertise across all forms of media.

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FUTURE TRENDS AND PROTOTYPES /

City Lights Orchestra STRASBOURG, ORLÉANS, MULHOUSE, REIMS, AND OTHERS, FRANCE 2015 - ONGOING

Antoine Schmitt

One of the very early examples of digital placemaking and media architecture was

Concept Design

the 2001 Blinkenlight project in Berlin that made use of the windows on a building

Light Design

facade in order to create a very low-resolution media facade. City Lights Orchestra picks up on the idea of using the light in windows to create a participative visual symphony for the windows of the city.

Using the screens of computers, laptops or TVs as a light source each citizen activates the symphony at home by simply displaying, on their own device, the citylightsorchestra.net web page. Once the web page is activated at night, it blinks, pulsates, beats, fades in and out, each according to its own score, but in rhythm with all the others. Through orientating the screen of your device towards the window, your window becomes one pixel in the giant screen of all windows in the city. Hence the whole city becomes the orchestra – both spectator and interpreters of the symphony that is playing.

Requiring nothing more than an Internet connection and a screen-based device, anybody can participate and join the symphony at any time as the page plays the visual score, by blinking black and white or other colour scores, and can leave at any time as the score is composed to be open to any number of interpreters. The composition is also open in time, as it is written through a generative algorithm that creates new movements and forms forever, following an initial musical DNA. The dynamics of the beats and blinks originate both in musical structures and in organic rhythms.

Designed to be played during specific large public events or festivals, which can gather a large number of participants thanks to a strong communication, the project allows a participation in digital placemaking for all citizens of a city.

Fig. 1: Each illuminated window becomes one pixel in this urban-scale installation © Antoine Schmitt

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FUTURE TRENDS AND PROTOTYPES / CITY LIGHTS ORCHESTRA

Fig. 2: Close-up view of one “pixel” © Antoine Schmitt

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FUTURE TRENDS AND PROTOTYPES /

Fluidic MILAN, ITALY 2013

Christopher Bauder, Anna

What is unique to protagonists of future trends and prototypes, is their exploration

Pilarska / WHITEvoid

of new materials, which often pushes the boundaries of what media displays are

Concept Design

or can be. This includes exploring new shapes, forms and dimensions, pointing towards new platforms for digital placemaking.

Christopher Bauder Light Design

This project represents such a prototype of a new form of display, drawing on

Content

complex software algorithms, new lighting technology, and state-of-the-art sensors for user interaction. The installation takes the form of what looks like seemingly

VVVV / checksum5 / Joreg,

random particles composing a larger organised structure like the atoms of a

Sebastian Gregor, Anton

molecule. Molecules of light are constantly in motion, reacting to people engaging

Mezhiborskiy

with the installation.

Interaction Design

The installation combines eight high-speed laser projectors and a physical point Lasers / Michael Sollinger -

cloud formed by 12,000 spheres. Each of the suspended point cloud particle’s

LaserAnimation Sollinger

position has been calculated with a help of a complex computer algorithm from the

Hardware

viewpoints of the laser projectors to create an impression of random arrangement.

The voxel facade that emerged from this process, allows the laser beams to reach all spheres without occlusion even deep inside the array. The laser-lit spheres form three-dimensional graphics without any sweet or blind spots. Keeping the same density and intensity the installation allows viewers to observe and interact simultaneously from every point of view. People can interact with the installation through postures and gestures, which are recognised using software algorithms that take into account the positions of viewers, captured via multiple 3D camera tracking systems.

The installation creates ever-changing dynamic light sculptures, which are shaped by people’s interactions. As such, the project conveys the inspirational role played by nature and its ability to continuously adapt and evolve. It achieves this through a

Fig. 1: The installation uses physical spheres and laser projectors to create a visual point cloud © WHITEvoid / Till Beckmann

form that is both flexible and solid, a flow with both a distinctive profile and dynamic motion.

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FUTURE TRENDS AND PROTOTYPES / FLUIDIC

Fig. 2: Viewers can interact with the installation through gestures and postures © WHITEvoid / Till Beckmann

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FUTURE TRENDS AND PROTOTYPES / MEGAFACES

Fig. 5: 3D photo booths allowed visitors to capture a selfie, which was then sent to the facade © Axis

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Since the first publication on media architecture Media Facades – History, Technology, Content in 2009 and its sequel New Media Facades – A Global Survey in 2012, the field of media architecture has reached global relevance.

Media architecture is now acknowledged as a framework and a way of thinking for transforming public space by embedding digital media into the built environment. Thus, digital placemaking is arguably the new frontier for media architecture.

This compendium explores how digital media is shaping cities today and in the years to come. It illustrates ground breaking use of light and media in urban environments through 36 projects that were finalists for the Media Architecture Biennale awards in 2014 and 2016. The projects span five categories: Animated Architecture; Money Architecture; Participatory Architecture & Urban Interaction; Spatial Media Art; and Future Trends & Prototypes. The projects range from autonomous drones by Ars Electronica, shopping centres in China by UNStudio, art installations visualising climate change by Roosegaarde Studio, to many more temporary and contemporary media architecture interventions. The projects are supplemented by essays from leading thinkers in the fields of media architecture and digital placemaking, sharing their insights and visions on how new paradigms such as the internet of things, big data and responsive environments will transform our cities.

The book is the third publication of the Media Architecture Institute, which holds offices in Vienna, Sydney, Beijing and Toronto and summarises the research and findings of the Media Architecture Biennale events 2014 in Aarhus and 2016 in Sydney.

Dr Luke Hespanhol is a lecturer in Design and Computation at the University of Sydney. He has designed interactive installations for multiple public spaces, and his research investigates the confluence of digital media, architecture, electronic art, design and technology in the usercentred design of responsive and hybrid urban environments.

Associate Professor M. Hank Haeusler, PhD is Discipline Director of Computational Design at Australian School of Architecture + Design at the University of New South Wales, Sydney; Director of the MAI Australasia and known as researcher, educator, entrepreneur and designer in media architecture and computational design through over 50 publications.

Associate Professor Martin Tomitsch is Chair of Design at the University of Sydney’s School of Architecture, Design and Planning, Research Director of the Design Lab, and founding member of the Media Architecture Institute. His research crosses the domains of interaction design, creative technologies and cities.

Dr Gernot Tscherteu is founding member of the Media Architecture Institute and founder of Media Architecture Biennale und Media Facades Summit. He is Director of MAI Europe; author of several publications discussing the sociological aspects of media architecture; and was in 2013 Guest Professor at Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing.

49,- € (D) 69.00 USD ISBN 978-3-89986-251-5

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