Enriching Urban Spaces with Interactive/ Entertaining Lighting

1. Responsive/Interactive Architecture
Enriching Urban Spaces with Interactive/
Entertaining Lighting

2. Architecture as media:
the evolution
The prescribed
The responsive
The interactive
What is prescribed architecture?.
Ex: Beijing National Aquatics
Center (Lighting)
Ex: UN Studio’s Galleria
Department Store façade in
Seoul (Lighting)
What is responsive architecture?.
Ex: Sony Center am Potsdamer
Platz | Funkturm Berlin (Lighting)
In the age of knowledge, architecture is the storyteller.

3. Architecture as media:
the evolution
The prescribed
The responsive
The interactive
Ex: UN Studio’s La Defense
project in the Netherlands
(Lighting)
What is interactive architecture?.
Ex:Thomas Heatherwick’s Rolling
Bridge
Ex: Under Scan, artist Rafael
Lozano-Hemmer (Lighting)
Ex:Volume, a 2006 installation at
London'sVictoria and Albert
Museum (Lighting)
Ex: Dune | Studio Roosegaarde,
interactive landscape (Lighting)

4. Architecture as
media: the evolution
The prescribed
The responsive
The interactive
• It is a particular kind of pre-conceived story,
performance, or event unfolding over time.With
a clear beginning and end that are made,
packaged, and then received, it is entirely pre-
scripted.
Film GuildCinema created by architect Fredrick Kiesler
• Ex. Film Guild Cinema created by architect
Fredrick Kiesler
• It no longer exists, but remains one of the most
progressive film theater designs to this day. The film
screen was a lens that functioned like the pupil of
an eye, expanding and contracting to fit the
different shapes and sizes of screens and
eliminating the need for curtains
• Synchronized with it was a multiple projection
system that extended across the walls and
ceiling

5. Architecture as
media: the evolution
The prescribed
The responsive
The interactive
Thomas Heatherwick’s sculptural Sitooterie restaurant
Beijing National Aquatics Center

6. Architecture as
media: the evolution
The prescribed
The responsive
The interactive
Beijing National Aquatics Center
• lighting designer Zhen Jianwei
• Concept: visualize the energy
flow of the Chinese people
• The lighting system consists of a
program that collects emoticons
used every day by millions of
users on the Chinese
microblogging site Weibo (the
Chinese counterpart toTwitter),
and then interprets them to form
an overview of the mood of the
Chinese people.
• These moods—anger, happiness,
depression, excitement—are
expressed in subtle gradients of
colors.
LEDs integrated into
the pillow frames

7. London’s Business Design Centre London’s EyeSteiermärkische Bank in Graz, Austria

8. General Definition:
The Sony Center in Berlin, Germany, is an international
commercial, communication, and cultural hub that draws
nearly 8.3 million visitors a year.
Components:
• The focal point of the complex is The Forum, a roofed
public square.
• Constructed of steel, glass, and cloth streamers, the
Forum's roof is the Sony Center's most prominent
architectural element.
• At night, the roof comes alive with fascinating light
shows
• designed by Paris project artist Yann Kersale, in varying
shades of cyan and magenta.
Why new lighting system?
The Forum's original incandescent lighting system had been in
place for twelve years. After constant operation, it was
reaching its maximum life expectancy and had become too
costly to maintain. The Sony Center was looking for a
replacement system that was long-lasting, energy-efficient,
and low-maintenance, but that could still create color-
changing light shows.
Sony Center, Berlin,
Germany

9. DesignTarget:
“bringing the whole Sony Center to life”
• The team from solution provider Alexander Weckmer Licht und
Mediensysteme GmbH had to deliver a solution that could provide powerful
and uniform illumination of the unique fan-like geometry of the roof.
• Since each individual "sail" of the fan had varying dimensions, slope, and
shape, each fixture would have to be individually positioned to achieve
uniform illumination.
• They installed Philips Color Kinetics ColorReach Powercore and ColorBlast
Powercore LED floodlighting fixtures, which were powerful and flexible
enough to achieve all of the project's goals.
LightingTechnology:
With the new full-color LED lighting fixtures and high-bandwidth digital control,
the Sony Center can now choose from more than 16 million colors,can create new
light shows for special events such as film opening nights and holidays — all
while cutting energy consumption by 73% .

11. Architecture as
media: the evolution
The prescribed
The responsive
The interactive
• Responsive architecture is most simply defined as a
space that responds to its environment but has no
agency
• It absorbs information from its general environment
and responds to it in some way but people cannot
actively affect or change its behavior
• sound and light sculptures absorbed data from their
environment and translated it into kinetic
performances.
UN Studio’s Galleria Department Store façade in Seoul
• Lighting Design: Arup Lighting, Rogier
• skin made from 4,330 glass discs backed with a dichroic
adhesive film. Digitally controlled LEDs behind each disc
emit a changing landscape of color at night, driven by
variables in the environment.Tabard Square’s barometer controlled beacon

12. • LED lighting manufacturer Xilver delivered
5000 color changing LED lights
• The Galleria is completely covered by a
series of 80 cm-diameter frosted glass
discs which are backlit by LED lights
• The LEDs change the color of each of the
discs and thus enable the creation of a vivid
play of colors and graphics to be displayed
on the exterior of the store
• Xilver developed a controller that can
control up to 4 individual RGB LED lights
called RainDrops.These RainDrops are
individually addressable and thus
controllable through any DMX-512 device
(a standard for digital communication networks that are commonly
used to control stage lighting and effects).
• special software to automatically adjust
the intensity and wavelength of each fixture
related to the LEDs used from a particular
binning

13. LED Lights
http://www.ledsmagazine.com/articles/2005/01/leds-transform-
department-store-in-seoul.html
urban architectural design
• Software provides DMX signals to the lights.
• In normal cases, hardware could handle 16 DMX lines, while in
this case we had to control 32 lines. In total something like
15,000 DMX channels are controlled by E:Cue's Programmer
software and 8 E-Link Ethernet nodes.
• Each lighting fixture of Xilver acts as a pixel of a video screen.
• The E:Cue programmer software intelligently combines lighting
control with the display of videos and bitmaps through the
Xilver color changing LED lighting fixtures
• All kind of effects can be added easily to these images (special
occasions, and can be changed over time according to seasons, fashion events and
artistic inspirations)

15. During the day the atmospheric and weather changes influence the degree
of reflection and absorption of light and color on the glass circles, so that
from different viewing points the appearance of each disc and the total
surface changes constantly according to those external conditions that are
beyond human control.

16. Architecture as
media: the evolution
The prescribed
The responsive
The interactive
• Interactivity essentially means that both people and
buildings have agency, enabling the creation of
conversations between the two in real-time.
• Interactive Architecture is a processes of creating dynamic
spaces and objects capable of performing a range of pragmatic and
humanistic functions.
• These complex physical interactions are made possible by the
creative fusion of embedded computation (intelligence) with a
physical, tangible counterpart (kinetics).
• A uniquely twenty-first century toolbox and skill set-virtual and
physical modeling, sensor technology, CNC fabrication, prototyping,
and robotics-necessitates collaboration across many diverse scientific
and art-based communities.
• Interactive Architecture includes contributions from the worlds of
architecture, industrial design, computer programming, engineering,
and physical computing.
Computer Numerical Control (CNC)

17. Architecture as
media: the evolution
The prescribed
The responsive
The interactive
• Creates environments facilitate interaction between
people.
• These space are able to reconfigure themselves in
response to human stimuli-will literally change our
worlds by addressing our ever-evolving individual,
social, and environmental needs.
• Allowing technology to evolve naturally, it replaces
static forms that are set and stable with living,
interactive spaces that can be many different things to
many different people.
• Instead of being just the venue for storytelling (whether
in libraries, churches, theaters, offices, homes, or
sports arenas), this intelligent, kinetic architecture itself
becomes the storyteller.

18. Architecture as
media: the evolution
The prescribed
The responsive
The interactive
• Interactivity essentially means that both people and
buildings have agency, enabling the creation of
conversations between the two in real-time.
uses reflective material effects to create a heightened relationship between architecture and its
environment. Coated in its entirety with a unique 3M-developed diachronic foil, the façade
absorbs its environment and reflects it back through a spectrum of colors.
UN Studio’s La Defense project in the Netherlands

19. Architecture as
media: the evolution
The prescribed
The responsive
The interactive
Inspired by the Oscar ceremonies’ red carpet procession and operated by hydraulic ramps set in the
handrails, the bridge rolls and unrolls. Here, using simple mechanics, the bridge responds to the needs of
the city by either opening the water passage or creating a passage for people.
Thomas Heatherwick’s Rolling Bridge

20. Architecture as media: the
evolution
The prescribed
The responsive
The interactive
large-scale public art project Under Scan is an installation of thousands of video portraits projected into town
squares in England.The portraits are camouflaged by floodlights and are revealed when people pass through the
square.These digital portraits interact with the pedestrians, turning away as pedestrians lose interest and walk
away. Under Scan embodies the ideas of interactive architecture: a space that, through intelligent exchanges,
creates highly curated, personalized, and reactive responses.These blur the boundaries between the physical and the
virtual, engaging the audience in endless conversations.
Under Scan, artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer

21. • To explore themes of self-
representation, participants were filmed
for up to three minutes, freely
portraying themselves doing whatever
they felt best represented them.
• Passers-by were detected by a
computerised tracking system,
which activated the video portraits
and projected them within their
shadow.
• The portraits 'woke up' and established
eye contact with the viewer as soon as
his or her shadow 'revealed' them. As the
viewer walked away, the portraits
reacted by looking away, and eventually
disappeared if no-one activated them.
• Every seven minutes the entire
installation stopped and reset itself,
revealing the tracking system in a brief
sequence which projected all of the
calibration grids used by the
computerised surveillance system.

22. Architecture as media: the
evolution
The prescribed
The responsive
The interactive
Positioned dramatically in the center of the museum’s garden, a field of light and sound sculptures responded to
human movement, creating endless and everchanging audio-visual experiences for its visitors.This interactive
piece created a kinetic narrative space that engaged both the environment and its users in active, real-time
conversations.
Volume, a 2006 installation at London'sVictoria and Albert Museum

23. Dune | Studio Roosegaarde
Architecture as media:
the evolution
The prescribed
The responsive
The interactive
• public interactive landscape that interacts
with human behavior
• This hybrid of nature and technology is
composed of large amounts of fibers that
brighten according to the sounds and motion
of passing visitors
• DUNE enhances social interactions in the
public pedestrian Maastunnel

24. Dune | Studio RoosegaardeArchitecture as media:
the evolution
The prescribed
The responsive
The interactive
• public interactive landscape that
interacts with human behavior
• utilizes fewer than 60 watts of
energy.
DUNE 4.2, situated alongside the Maas River in Rotterdam (NL)

25. Conclusion
• Various urban spaces can be transformed into interactive spaces
using low-cost, lightweight interactive lighting.
• Most current design examples of interactive architecture, i.e.
responsive digital environments, are large, rather expensive
projects carried out and displayed in high-tech buildings and
museums.
• In carrying out this kind of projects in public spaces not originally
designed for installations and events of this kind, a large number
of practical concerns are encountered ; that need to be dealt
with:
1. issues of access to the power grid,
2. changing weather condition,
3. stakeholders and gatekeepers with different perspectives
4. issues of safety and vandalization.

26. References
• http://rice.iuav.it/221/1/04_zarin-fallmann.pdf
• https://segd.org/interactive-architecture
• http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/news-features/news/emoji-in-light-on-the-beijing-water-cube/
• http://www.ledsmagazine.com/articles/2005/01/leds-transform-department-store-in-seoul.html
• https://www.google.com/search?q=Under+Scan&newwindow=1&biw=1280&bih=656&source=lnms&tbm=i
sch&sa=X&ei=5h3uVLnOMInLPYLTgIAG&ved=0CAcQ_AUoATgK#imgdii=_&imgrc=-
lpNzZc9jIStLM%253A%3BmNdKtlG7JTun4M%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fcdn.trendhunterstatic.com%252
Fthumbs%252Funder-scan-project-interactive-video-
shadows.jpeg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.trendhunter.com%252Ftrends%252Funder-scan-project-
interactive-video-shadows%3B300%3B470

27. ThankYou