Updated for 2011, this guide covers how to estimate, warranties and quantity discounts, an estimate form, design and engineering fees, service and installation hourly rates, a letter footage chart, and ...
Digital building wraps continue to interface art and technology with the urban landscape.
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By Louis Brill
Media facades have blossomed in many directions, with great promise to LED-sign manufacturers, sign integrators, architects, media planners and urban developers, who recognize how this supersized signage enhances the urban landscape. Bottom line, signage has media facades covered.
“The integration of media facades in a building structure is transforming how architecture creates buildings,” said Tom Powley, president of GKD-USA, a Cambridge, MD branch of the Düren, Germany-based manufacturer of Mediamesh®, a metallic woven fabric with an embedded, LED video display that covers building facades. GKD collaborates with Cologne, Germany-based ag4, which invented Mediamesh, in providing media-façade architectural solutions for various applications.
Powley said, “The creation of a media facade on a building allows the building to come alive with imaging and lighting, which changes how it relates to its surrounding cityscape. This is a development of corporate branding and corporate-identity programs, creating its highest and most visible presence. This, in effect, is a new era for corporate displays.”
Media facades’ display screens allow corporations to communicate their identities in public spaces. Two recent ag4 projects highlighted in the article (see pages 91 and 94) demonstrate “mediatecture” designs and the structural integration that links the media facade into its surrounding cityscape.
Successful media façades match the building project with the appropriate LED media-facade display to cover the building. Building height and shape no longer restrict LED-videoscreen placement. Equally important, a media-facade plan should cover content creation and management. Time for community relations is also allocated on media facades.
ST takes a worldwide look at recently built media facades, including the Faberge Egg in Macau, China; the Khalifa Sports Stadium in Doha, Qatar; and the Miracle Mile Shops in Las Vegas.
With such a groundswell of media-façade interest, sign companies should anticipate soon managing digital-building covers in their own communities.
The Faberge Egg
Macau, China has become the Asian Las Vegas by adding layers of electronic-digital-sign glitz to brighten its building coverage. The Grand Lisboa hotel in Macau built a companion casino, the Faberge Egg, which is shaped like an egg cut lengthwise. Like its gem-encrusted namesake, the Grand Lisboa’s distinct, awe-inspiring, LED, video facade glows as it promotes visitors’ potential good fortunes.
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