The Design Space of Media Architecture Displays

摘要

Media architecture, a subfield of interactive surfaces and architecture, is the term for digital technologies at large scale integrated into the built environment. This field emerged from the common practice of mounting large displays on the facade of a building, also known as urban screens. Iconic media architecture installations include Blinkenlights, which transformed Haus des Lehrers at Alexanderplatz in Berlin into an interactive installation by turning each of the 18x8 windows of the high-rise building into an interactive display, where people could play the game of pong using their mobile phone or upload low-resolution images and animations. A remarkable case is Jean Nouvel's Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, where each window is a mechanical device similar to a camera shutter that can open and close, allowing more or less light and fresh air to enter the building while at the same time acting as pixels of the facade. Another example is the Danish Pavilion at the 2010 EXPO in Shanghai, a building with a 300-meter-long curvilinear facade, where 3,500 ventilation holes are turned into pixels forming a three-dimensional and extremely low-resolution display with an aspect ratio of 25:1. As summarized in Table 1, media architecture differs from conventional interfaces in several aspects [1].