Media architecture compendium by av edition GmbH

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

Table of Contents 6

Foreword by Nashid Nabian and Carlo Ratti

Introduction by M. Hank Haeusler and Martin Tomitsch

Definitions

Media Architecture – Architecture in the Second Machine Age? by M. Hank Haeusler

New Opportunities for Media Architecture: From Spectacle Placemaking to Infrastructure Placemaking by Martin Tomitsch

A Glimpse on the Terms “Smart Citizens” and “Sharing” by Gernot Tscherteu

Animated Architecture

888 Collins Street

Energy Tower Facade Lighting

Harpa Reykjavik

Light Frieze Kunstmuseum Basel

Train Station Falkenberg

Virtual Depictions

Theories

Embracing Place: Grounding Technology Back into Context by Alessandro Aurigi

Cities of Electronic Clay: Media Architecture for Malleable Public Spaces by Luke Hespanhol

Redesigning the Design of Place by Ian McArthur

Money Architecture

Dia Lights / Urban Canvas

Hanjie Wanda Square

Klubhaus St. Pauli

LAX – Tom Bradley International Terminal

Mondeal Square

Morgan Stanley – Times Square Headquarters

Table of Contents 88

Motivations

Media Architecture and the Role of Urban Media Art in Digital Placemaking by Dave Colangelo

The Heap and Digital Diffraction: The Place of Digital Placemaking by Brad Miller

Disobedience â&#x20AC;&#x201C; What Urban Media Art Brings to Digital Placemaking by Tanya Toft

100

Participatory Architecture & Urban Interaction

102

Grow-It

106

I Am

110

In The Air, Tonight

114

Le Circuit de Bachelard

118

Megaphone

122

The Sentiment Cocoon

126

Methods

127

Tools and Approaches to Support Collaborative Digital Placemaking in Media Architecture by Peter Dalsgaard

130

Designing Conditions for Digital Placemaking: Embodied, Performative, and Participatory by Ava Fatah gen. Schiek

133

Augmenting Public Spaces with Virtual Content by Callum Parker

138

Spatial Media Art

144

Field of Light

144

Human BEEing

148

Light Barrier

152

Spine

156

STAR

160

Waterlicht

Table of Contents 164

Practice

165

Urban Screens as a Nexus for a Digital Placemaking Approach Towards Civic Space by Glenn Harding and Emma Shearman

168

Smart Cities and Urban Innovation by Scott Hawken

171

Digital Placemaking after 6 Years: Defining an Emerging Practice by Daniel Latorre and Glenn Harding

176

Future Trends and Prototypes

178

City Lights Orchestra

182

Disco Infono

186

Drone 100

190

Fluidic

194

MegaFaces

198

Participation Plus

202

Governance

203

Some Thoughts on Digital Placemaking by Marcus Foth

206

Finding the Human Factor in Digital Placemaking: A Research Journey through the Digital Nexus by Glenda Caldwell and Joel Fredericks

209

Digitally-mediated Participatory Placemaking: Or, How to Automate the Social Production of Urban Spaces by Homa Rahmat

214

Author Biographies

216

Imprint

FOREWORD /

Living Architectures, Intelligent Cities and Smart Citizens

BY NASHID NABIAN AND CARLO RATTI

Dr Nashid Nabian has a

“Total Fluidity on All Scales” was the title of a Zaha Hadid lecture at the

doctoral degree from the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology in April 2007. For several hours, the audience

Harvard Graduate School

stood in front of wondrous forms of all scales that suggested the idea of movement

of Design and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at MIT Senseable City Lab. She is co-founder of Shift Process Practice, an architecture studio based in Tehran, and the Tehran Urban Innovation Center (TUIC), which is the R&D proxy of Shift, focusing on smart cities and citizens

– from objects to buildings, and even cities. The quest for movement in design can be traced back to Baroque times. Baroque master architects like Bernini made static structures “appear” to be in perpetual motion by representing one moment in which movement was frozen. A similar attitude led to the Futurist movement, where visual artists tried to depict movement and change through representing the processes of movement, or the volume that a moving entity would occupy. In all those attempts the goal was to create the illusion of movement with human artifice and the proper technology.

and implementation of smart urban solutions for Iranian

There is, however, another approach to the design of moving, living artifacts, which

cities.

we believe holds much promise for the future. Often relegated to niche designers and to inventors outside the world of architecture, it focuses not on form, but on process: how movement could actually be implemented, not just represented. This idea can be traced back to the 18th-century phenomenon of self-operating machines called automata (“that which acts on its own will” in ancient Greek). Automata were complex, programmable machines that exhibited perfectly lifelike movements. One famous example is the Joueuse de Tympanon, a mechanised doll that played a musical device, built for Marie Antoinette by David Roentgen and Pierre Kintzing around 1784. The fascination with automata had its routes in the Enlightenment’s ideological shift from a natural to a mechanistic world view, represented by Descartes’s interpretation of natural organisms as automata, allowing man to reconsider the origins of life and the very definition of being alive.

FOREWORD / NASHID NABIAN AND CARLO RATTI

Later, in 1822, Charles Babbage’s proposed machines would advance man’s quest to create life towards the automated actuation of the physical world. One could perhaps claim that Babbage’s “Difference Engine” was the first cybernetic mechanism, although the feedback between the system’s output and input was mediated mechanically instead of electronically. Cybernetics officially emerged with Norbert Wiener and his principle of expanding human control over the environment via electronic interfaces, operating based on feedback principle, and capable of changing their course of action and mode of An architect and engineer by training, Professor Carlo Ratti teaches at MIT, where he

operation in response to their context. Cybernetics soon moved into the realm of architecture. Cedric Price’s proposal

directs the Senseable City Lab.

for the “Fun Palace” was perhaps one of the first examples of an architectural

He is also a founding partner

cybernetic system to incorporate Wiener’s feedback principle, responding to its

of the international design

visitors’ needs by dynamically adapting its spatial configuration.

and innovation office Carlo Ratti Associati. He has coauthored over 500 publications and holds several patents. His work has been exhibited worldwide at venues such as the Venice Biennale, the Design Museum in Barcelona, the Science Museum in London, and The Museum of Modern Art in New York.

The vision of architectures capable of soliciting their inhabitants’ control over the production and consumption of space also prevailed in Yona Friedman’s 1958 manifesto for mobile architecture. Friedman’s concept glorified the role of the users of architectural space. He tried to offer simple manuals for visions of cities where dwellers would shape their environments, such as a mobile city where buildings would only minimally touch the ground, allowing them to be dismantled and moved by the occupants. In this utopian mobile city, space effectively becomes an interface through which the inhabitants realize their desires and regulate their needs. It could be said that all of the above work, dating from the mid-20th century, already contained most of the principles necessary to design responsive, living environments. However, at the time it still lacked the effective communication infrastructure needed to acquire global relevance. This has now emerged in the digital net. Here we need to clarify the concept of network in architecture: “net talk” is not “new talk”. In his 2001 article “Network Fever”, Mark Wigley expresses his doubts about the networked condition as a completely new intellectual and socio-technical phenomenon, building his hypothesis on precedents from the 50s and 60s that signalled a “radical confusion of architecture and network”. The fascination with constructed landscapes as networks, Wigley reminds us, is quite clear in Stefan

Animated Architecture

Projects that we refer to under the term Animated Architecture, integrate media with the built form of buildings, often in the form of media facades. Although there is a media component, architecture remains the definitive reference system. Dynamic media elements are used intentionally – not to dissolve the architecture but to shape it in a contemporary way. The intention of Animated Architecture projects is not to make architecture the carrier of new media technologies, but architecture, more than ever, is the medium itself. Arguably architecture has always had a medial or communicative function. While in the past representative architecture often had the function of expressing religious, economic or political messages, it is now mainly about representing ‘communication’ itself. A building and its users are of public importance, if they are instruments of communication. This communication is not limited to the content, which is displayed via media facades or other forms of media displays. Instead, protagonists from this category are primarily concerned with the architecture’s participation in the reproduction of a media society. Here architecture should and must take a central position in media society – expressed through digital placemaking. Content communicated via a media facade is generally dependent on the facade’s structure – often in low resolution and limited colour range, resulting in limited options for content. Consequently, despite the designer’s greatest intentions and skills the media facade’s aesthetics remain a very restrictive parameter for the designer – and architecture dominates the experience. With the number of pixels too limited to present detailed images, but sufficient to give the building a specific appearance and to stage it in an urban context, the facade, and with it the building, becomes dynamically changeable, hence our choice for the term ‘Animated Architecture’. When illumination and building hardware are perceived as one, and integrated at the beginning of a design process, Animated Architecture is an expansion of architecture that can bring traditional elements of architecture into the 21st century.

ANIMATED ARCHITECTURE /

Energy Tower Facade Lighting ROSKILDE, DENMARK 2014

Erick van Egeraat

Infrastructure projects such as power plants are normally known for their size and

Concept Design

presence in the built environment but rarely as a canvas for digital art. The Energy Tower marks a welcomed exception that has the dimensions and scale of a power

Gunver Hansen Tegnestue

plant – being an approximately 190 metres long slender body, which grows to an

Light Design

approximately 100 metres high tower at one end of the building, and allows for endless variations of dynamic light scenes to be played on its facades.

Martin Professional Content

The facades are made of dark brown amber coloured anodised aluminium sheets,

Hardware

perforated in a pattern of circular holes of different sizes with diameters of 25, 50, 75 and 100 centimetres. Perforation varies over the facade, with the fewest holes in the body of the building and most holes up in the tower. At daytime, through the holes one can see the interior of the building facades, the inside of the tower’s facade panels, the chimney, interior windshields and the metal structures that carry the external facade panels. At night-time, all internal facades are projected with RGBW LEDs that illuminate the inner building facade and the inside of the facade panels in the tower, so the luminance are seen through the holes of the outer facade plates. Mounted on the metal structure that carries the outer facade panels, the LEDs are not visibly seen from outside the building. The light distribution on the illuminated surfaces is varied; each LED projector forms its own light spot, which thus can form one pixel in the light pattern of the media facade. Connected to a light control system, each projector can be controlled individually in terms of light colour and brightness, and all projectors can be programmed in dynamic light scenes. The Energy Tower has a great potential to communicate with the citizens and can, for example, change colour and light pattern in honour of anniversaries and events in Roskilde, such as the Roskilde Festival week marked with orange light.

Fig. 1: The building and its media facade seen from a distance © Kara Noveren

ANIMATED ARCHITECTURE / ENERGY TOWER FACADE LIGHTING

Fig. 2: The media facade features perforated holes across the building’s body © Jeppe Sørensen

ANIMATED ARCHITECTURE / ENERGY TOWER FACADE LIGHTING

Fig. 3: The colour of each pixel in the media facade can be controlled individually © Jeppe Sørensen

Fig. 4: Detailed view of the interior facade construction © Gunver Hansen

Fig. 5: The content of the media facade is used to communicate with citizens, and to align with anniversaries and events © Jeppe Sørensen

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 /

KLUBHAUS St. Pauli HAMBURG, GERMANY 2015

akyol kamps : bbp architekten

Like New York Times Square’s media facades, which have their historic background

bda GmbH / URBANSCREEN

in the use of mid-1940s theatre and cabaret outdoor displays, Hamburg’s St. Pauli

GmbH & Co KG

area has evolved over time to embrace contemporary facade designs that reflect

Concept Design

advances in light technology.

Intermediate Engineering

The Klubhaus St. Pauli project is a six storey-building housing music clubs, theatres

Interaction Design

and offices featuring a media facade consisting of 177 square metre of high resolution media mesh, 265 square metre of RGB panels and 50 square metre of

URBANSCREEN GmbH & Co KG

high resolution glass displays in the elevator area. The intention of the media facade

Content

is to contribute to the building’s identity rather than merely functioning as a screen.

Light Design

In order to preserve the very basic communicative function of the facade, the media layer is fragmented by the facade’s pattern structure and thereby interwoven with

Multivision LED- Systeme Gmbh,

the physical surface.

Onlyglass GmbH Hardware

The main part of the facade is composed of semi-translucent, gold-shaded metal plates in varying depth in which the imaging elements and light sources are integrated. They are arranged in an offset pattern structure that responds to the overall architectural construction. The elevator element on the right side of the building is clad in transparent media facade elements in a higher resolution. The media facade combines different imaging and lighting technologies. The metal panels of the main facade are equipped with light emitting LED meshes in varying resolutions as well as indirect RGB lighting sources. In the elevator area, the highresolution LED stripes are integrated into the insulating glass units. One third of the displayed content consists of a set of ‘core visuals’ – artistic video compositions exclusively designed for this purpose. The compositions are displayed when no advertising or informational content is active, thus decisively shaping the

Fig. 1: Klubhaus St. Pauli is located right in the heart of Hamburg’s famous Reeperbahn district © Christian O. Bruch

Klubhaus’ appearance and character. To achieve this a comprehensive design guide was developed to ensure a constantly high aesthetic quality as well as the optimum representation of the digital content.

MONEY ARCHITECTURE / KLUBHAUS ST. PAULI

Fig. 2: The media facade consists of LED panels on the main part of the building and LED stripes integrated into the glass of the elevator unit Â© Christian O. Bruch

MONEY ARCHITECTURE / KLUBHAUS ST. PAULI

Fig. 3: Each of the panels contains an RGB LED lighting system that illuminates the panel with indirect light in any colour Â© URBANSCREEN

Spatial Media Art

Since media art is formed and absorbed in a completely different context than architecture, representatives from this category, are more likely to conduct experiments and to pursue avant-garde approaches. This is based on the assumption that artists are rarely compelled to design prototypes of new building surfaces and displays, however, the area of media art can still offer important impulses for architecture. In this context, the entries are less about new technical solutions and innovations, as it is the case with the category â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Future Trends and Prototypesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, but more about aesthetic experiments, e.g. the spatial impact of three-dimensional displays or the combination of luminous spots with kinetic elements. Interestingly, an analysis of submissions to this award category since the establishment of the Media Architecture Awards in 2010, reveals that many applicants in this area have studied architecture, whereas others come from a video art or computer sciences background. As demonstrated by the projects included under this category, the protagonists do not limit themselves to a particular medium. The selected entries were chosen because their technical innovations do not end in themselves, but always lead to aesthetical innovations. The playful and experimental use of technology and aesthetics gives rise to astonishing results and presents an important source of inspiration for other areas of media architecture. Hence, we see this category as an experimental playground for digital placemaking where new forms of social, cultural and political concepts could be explored. At the same time, the category showcases objects of great beauty deployed either permanently or temporarily in rural or urban settings.

SPATIAL MEDIA ART /

Field of Light ULURU, NORTHERN TERRITORY, AUSTRALIA 2016

Bruce Munro

Digital placemaking is not limited to cities and iconic urban environments, such as

Concept Design

Shanghai or New York. Field of Light, a mixed media art installation using optical fibre cables to connect light sources, demonstrates that digital placemaking technologies can also transform rural landscapes. Situated near Uluru, the world famous rock formation in the red desert in central Australia, Field of Lights is an installation that uses 50,000 slender stems crowned with radiant frosted-glass spheres. Each sphere can be controlled to display different shades of coloured light. The artist chose a light colour palette that matches the colours of the surrounding desert, in particular lights present in the evening shades of the sunset and the colour palette at sunrise. The installation has been shown around the world, however, this iteration is the first to use solar power for illuminate the lights. 36 solar panels with 144 projectors were used to bring the installation to life. The installation covers 49,000 square metres of land, an area the size of seven football fields, to gently illuminate the remote desert area within sight of Uluru giving the impression that it stretches all the way to the famous rock, which is in approximately 18 kilometres distance. A series of pathways draw viewers into the installation allowing visitors to see it from different positions. The first iteration of this artwork was shown in 2004 in the UK, followed by temporary deployments in various locations in the US. All iterations of the installation have the shared human experience in mind, a topic very closely related to digital placemaking, as it brings the engagement and experience with digital content from a single user device to the public domain. The scale of the installation, or ‘screen’, allows a large audience to participate in the experience.

141

SPATIAL MEDIA ART / FIELD OF LIGHT

Fig. 2: The installation appears to be stretching all the way to the famous Uluru rock formation ÂŠ Mark Pickthall Fig. 3: The scale of the installation allows large audiences to participate in a shared human experience ÂŠ Mark Pickthall

142

SPATIAL MEDIA ART / FIELD OF LIGHT

143

FUTURE TRENDS AND PROTOTYPES /

Drone 100 VARIOUS (LINZ, LONDON, HAMBURG, SYDNEY) SINCE 2012, ONGOING

Ars Electronica Futurelab

Drones are currently mostly associated with military applications and remote-

Concept Design

controlled gimmicks. However, as drone technology becomes more advanced, they

Light Design

also allow for alternative applications that even reach into the digital placemaking

Interaction Design

domain.

Content

This project, which demonstrates the use of drones for creating visual spectacle AscTec Hummingbird

experiences in cities, came to life in 2012, when the first formation of 50 drones

quadrocopter

took to the sky, thrilling festivalgoers in Linz, Austria, and creating a media sensation

Hardware

worldwide. Using drones as pixels, so-called “spaxels”, allows for a pixel matrix that is not fixed to a two-dimensional surface area but can be moved in three spatial dimensions. A spaxel is represented by an unmanned aerial vehicle, a quadrocopter drone, using a GPS based autopilot for autonomous outdoor waypoint navigation. A dedicated high-level processor, which can be pre-programmed, controls the flight manoeuvres of the quadrocopters. The maximum flight time is approximately 20 minutes and the maximum speed of each spaxel is more than 50 kilometres per hour. Each spaxel is illuminated through an array of RGB LEDs, which can be altered in hue and brightness through corresponding remote commands. After the launch in Linz, choreographed drone flights in London followed. With “Drone 100” in Tornesch, a town on the outskirts of Hamburg, 100 drones were used setting a Guinness World Record for the largest number of unmanned aerial vehicles airborned simultaneously. The 100 drones also made an appearance in Australia in 2016, in front of Sydney’s world-famous Opera House, with a performance customtailored to the occasion and with musical accompaniment by the Sydney Youth Orchestra. Spaxels advance media facades an even further step away from a two-dimensional plane, surpassing voxels, which transported media facades into a third dimensions

– while still being attached to a building facade. Spaxels extend the concept of voxels from a discretely ordered matrix to a continous space.

187

FUTURE TRENDS AND PROTOTYPES / DRONE 100

Fig. 2: The drones are able to arrange themselves into a display of any shape, form or dimension © Ars Electronica / Don’t Panic Production

188

FUTURE TRENDS AND PROTOTYPES / DRONE 100

189

FUTURE TRENDS AND PROTOTYPES /

MegaFaces SOCHI, RUSSIA 2014

Asif Khan

As can be seen in well-known media architecture projects, large cultural or sport

Concept Design

events often provide a platform for innovation for media facades and display technologies. Such projects are either of temporary or permanent nature and

iart

conceived to celebrate the spirit of the event, as well as creating a spectacle

Interaction Design

experience for people attending the event.

Hardware

MegaFaces is an example for such a project, which combined new display iart and Scott Eaton

technology with the cultural phenomenon of selfies. It was installed at the Sochi

Content

2014 Winter Olympics to celebrate the “Everyman”. The project features a kinetic facade measuring 18 by 8 metres and consisting of 10,477 telescopic actuators arranged in a trigonal grid. Each actuator was able to extend by up to two meters and equipped with a custom-made RGB LED integrated within a frosted polycarbonate sphere, diffusing the light and distributing it evenly across the kinetic facade. The LEDs could be programmed to change colour as part of an image or video that is displayed on the facade. The facade featured a total of 100 modules containing a combination of 128 and 64 individual actuator units made from custom aluminium profiles. Using the actuators and LED pixels as display mechanism, the facade installation was able to create three-dimensional images. 3D photo booths installed within the building and across Russia invited people to take a selfie, which was then sent to the facade and displayed at a monumental scale. Facial impressions were relayed every minute to the facade. Over 150,000 giant selfies were shown on the facade over the period of the Games. For thousands of years, people have used portraiture to record their history on the landscape, buildings and through public art. Today we record our history

Fig 1: MegaFaces used a kinetic facade to display facial expressions of visitors during the 2014 Winter Olympics © Hufton & Crow

online via emoticons, selfies, and so on – the face persists as the simplest way to communicate emotion. The project aimed to bring this digital self-representation back into a physical, built form akin to historical portrait monuments but dynamic and open to anyone, regardless of their status, age, nationality, sexuality or gender.

195

FUTURE TRENDS AND PROTOTYPES / MEGAFACES

Fig. 2: Detail view of the backend of the actuators © Hufton & Crow Fig. 3: Each actuator could extend for up to two metres, creating three-dimensional images © Scott Eaton

196

FUTURE TRENDS AND PROTOTYPES / MEGAFACES

197

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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