Media Architecture

Using Information and Media as Construction Material

Alexander Wiethoff, Heinrich Hussmann, Alexander Wiethoff, Heinrich Hussmann

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9783110451375
• eBook ISBN: 9783110451597
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Filología
• Subtopic: Arquitectura general

The augmentation of urban spaces with technology, commonly referred to as Media Architecture, has found increasing interest in the scientific community within the last few years. At the same time architects began to use digital media as a new material apart from concrete, glass or wood to create buildings and urban structures. Simultaneously, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) researchers began to exploit the interaction opportunities between users and buildings and to bridge the gaps between interface, information medium and architecture. As an example, they extended architectural structures with interactive, light-emitting elements on their outer shell, thereby transforming the surfaces of these structures into giant public screens. At the same time the wide distribution of mobile devices and the coverage of mobile internet allow manifold interaction opportunities between open data and citizens, thereby enabling the internet of things in the public domain. However, the appropriate distribution of information to all citizens is still cumbersome and a mutual dialogue not always successful (i.e. who gets what data and when?). In this book we therefore provide a deeper investigation of Using Information and Media as Construction Material with media architecture as an input and output medium.

Designing Media Architecture: Technology, Tools and Processes

Peter Dalsgaard and Kim Halskov

Designing Media Architecture: Methods and Tools

1Introduction

In this chapter, we offer an overview of the methods and tools for designing media architecture. In our conception, design spans from initial discussions with stakeholders about the purpose and vision of the architectural outcome through concept development on to the final development stages. Media architecture represents a very clear and physical manifestation of the “information society” trope, in that it materialises information and merges it with the built environment, there for all to see. However, if it is to be accessible and meaningful, careful thought must be put into not only the technical implementation, but also the initial examination of the context in which media architecture will be placed and the potential effect on the people who will encounter it.

Given the large scope of media architecture design, the methods and tools involved are diverse. Some address the ‘softer’ sides of the process, e.g. aligning stakeholder interests and generating ideas and concepts, whereas others address technical challenges, such as creating prototypes with novel digital technologies. In order to bring structure to this diversity of methods and tools, we therefore organize our presentation into three phases of media architecture design: 1) preliminary research into context and use situations, 2) development of concept, and 3) mock-ups and prototyping. The methods and tools presented here represent the accumulated results of seven years of research and development of media architecture in our research lab, CAVI (Halskov 2011). In order to ground them in practice, we will show examples from three specific cases, in which we worked with a range of collaborators and stakeholders to create novel media architecture installations: Aarhus by Light, Odenplan, and the Expo Pavilion. We will first briefly introduce these cases, and then move on to the methods and tools employed in each of the five phases, before concluding the chapter with a summary and discussion of key issues.

2Three examples of media architecture design

To exemplify how methods and tools can be employed in media architecture design processes, we have selected three cases, in which our research and development lab has worked with external partners in real-life projects: Aarhus by Light, Odenplan, and the Expo Pavilion. The three cases are similar in terms of being large-scale installations in public settings, but also differ on a number of counts, for instance in terms of setting, purpose, and technologies, and thus represent some of the diversity that characterises media architecture. They also represent the development and refinement of the methods and tools employed in the field. Aarhus by Light was in many respects a pioneering project, which also means that many methods and tools were employed for the first time. Since then, they have been refined and developed, as represented by Odenplan, in which particular attention was paid to develop and tune the process, and in the Expo Pavilion case, in which a series of novel tools specifically for media architecture design were developed.

2.1Aarhus By Light

Aarhus by Light was an interactive media façade that engaged local citizens in new kinds of public behavior, in order to explore new possibilities of digital media in urban life, (Brynskov et al. 2007; Dalsgaard/Halskov 2010). The 700 m2 glass façade of the Musikhuset, the city concert hall of Aarhus, was fitted with 180 square meters of semi-transparent LED screen, which was distributed in a non-rectangular pattern behind the surface of the Musikhuset, facing an adjacent public park. Visitors to the park were met with a view of animated creatures crawling around the structure of the glass façade, along with a constantly moving outline of the Aarhus skyline, see Figure 1. Visitors interacting with Aarhus by Light. When visitors walked through the park, they passed through three interactive zones marked with coloured carpets. Once someone walked onto a carpet, a camera, together with custom designed software, identified the outline of the person’s body, thereby creating a silhouette on the screen. This silhouette encouraged a curious and playful investigation of the façade among the users, while enabling them to interact with the creatures, by pushing, lifting, and dropping them. The motivation behind Aarhus by Light was driven by research interests and curiosity, but was also supported by the concert hall management’s interest in challenging its own rather conservative image. They did not, however, in any way wish to influence the actual design.

Fig. 1: Aarhus By Light installed on the concert hall façade.

2.2Odenplan

Odenplan is a projected metro station in Stockholm, Sweden. The building was designed by 3XN Architects for the Odenplan plaza in Vasastan, in the centre of Stockholm, Figure 2. For the exterior stairs of the metro, the proposal was to integrate bands of LEDs along each step. During the design process, three design concepts were created: Contours, Playhead, and Traces (Korsgaard et al. 2012).

Fig. 2: Odenplan.

Contours emphasizes the contours of stairs by drawing lines along their edges, followed by each step being lit slowly upward, together with other simple visual effects. Playhead and Traces relied on camera technology enabling identifying the position and movements of people on stairs. Playhead turns the stairs into a musical score sheet. Each step represents a stave, and the position of a person sitting on the stairs represents a note, which is played when a virtual playhead moves across the stairs. Traces creates visual traces of the people sitting or moving about on the stairs, (Dalsgaard/Halskov 2010; Korsgaard et al. 2012).

2.3The EXPO Pavilion

The Danish Pavilion at Expo 2010, designed by BIG Architects, was part of the huge 2010 world EXPO exhibition in Shanghai visited in total by more than 73 million people of which more than 5 million people visited the Danish Pavilion. According to The Danish Enterprise and Construction Authority “the aim of the Danish pavilion was to create an opportunity for visitors to experience first hand the feel of a Danish city”. The façade had a double-loop shape, and from some angles appears as two bands, one above the other. When unfolded, the facade of the pavilion yielded a 300-metre-long, 12-metre-high structure, with a wavy shape due to the helical form of the building with 3,600 holes of various sizes and configuration. These holes were equipped with light fixtures hidden behind PVC tubes, diffusing light uniformly. In daylight, the façade displayed flickering white animations consisting of white surfaces broken by lines, fades, or silhouettes of people walking or bicycling along the façade. In the evening, animations included shimmering, abstract graphics, sweeps, fades, and animations along the entire length of the façade. Colours were mostly restricted to white and red (Halskov/Ebsen 2013) Figure 3.

Fig. 3: The EXPO Pavillion.

After this introduction to the three cases, we now turn our focus to the methods and tools involved in designing media architecture.

3Methods and Tools

Since the design of media architecture can span from initial explorations of potential project ideas to final implementation and integration of digital technologies into buildings and spaces, the methods and tools involved are highly diverse. In the following, we focus on three phases 1) preliminary research into context and use situations, 2) development of concept, and 3) prototyping in order to give an overview of central media architecture methods and tools. We have selected these both on the basis of our own work as well as extensive surveys of the field of media architecture in general and exemplify them using the three cases described above.

For each phase, we first describe the main characteristics and challenges of the phase. We then present tools and methods suited to support designers at each phase of the process and offer examples of how this has been accomplished in specific projects.

3.1Preliminary research of context and use situations

Although media architecture is often considered a highly technical discipline, the foundational work for designing new media architecture often begins long before specific technological considerations. Just as is the case with traditional architecture, the preliminary examinations of the context and potential use situations of a new installation are essential in setting the direction for the design process. It is often said that every design process is unique, and this certainly seems to hold for media architecture, since it is a field in rapid development, where the development of new technologies go hand in hand with the development of concepts and ideas for how to use them. Core activities in the preliminary phase involve 1) exploration of the location, 2) examination of potential use situations, 3) integration into new or existing architecture, and 4) negotiations and alignment among stakeholders.

3.1.1Exploration of location

One of the ways in which media architecture differs from other types of IT development is that the end product is typically tied to a specific location, which influences many of the subsequent design choices. For this reason, a good starting point for designers will often be to explore salient features of the location. This entails geographic concerns that might influence the project, such as weather and lighting conditions, the built environment, such as existing buildings, and sociocultural features, such as current uses of a space.

In practice, there is a range of design activities that can support designers in exploring a location. In the Odenplan case, the design team carried out a Site Tour in the early phases of the project. A Site Tour lets the workshop participants go to the site they are designing for or to a site with similar characteristics as the design site – either in physical shape or in the actions or situations taking place. The objective of a Site Tour is to sensitise participants to site-specific elements through an embodied experience of the site. While this can seem somewhat strange from the technical perspective that is often predominant in media architecture, research underlines how our physical bodies play a central role in shaping human experience in the world, understanding of the world and interactions in the world (Dourish 2004; Klemmer et al. 2006).

In the Odenplan case, the main architectural feature was a large public staircase akin to the Spanish steps in Rome. The design team therefore sought out a similar public staircase for the Site Tour to observe how this type of architecture affected social life, and to get a first-person understanding and experience of the place. The Site Tour thus focused on the qualities and constraints connected to a stairway area and its use as sitting area. It made the participants reflect on architectural elements such as points of view, physical positioning, etc.

Fig. 4: Bthere.

In addition to Site Tours, design methods such as Bthere (Eriksson et al. 2006), see Figure 4, and Design Space Schemas (Biskjaer et al. 2014) can support on-location explorations of the location and context. In addition to facilitating specific ways of examining the site, these methods also offer designers concrete means of mapping and documenting these insights, by capturing it either on physical maps or in a schematic form.

3.1.2Examination of potential use situations

Thoughtful media architecture is based on an understanding of the use situation that unfold in the space in which it is introduced. While there are instances in which media architecture is placed in settings in which few and stable situations unfold, it will in many cases be deployed in urban settings with a diverse range of situations and rhythms. For instance, a public plaza may be a market in the morning, a transit area in the afternoon, and a place for gathering and socialising in the evening. The design of media architecture for such a setting must take all of these into account, for it is likely to alter them, either by reinforcing, transforming, or hindering them – or perhaps by fostering entirely new situations into the existing setting.

Aarhus by Light is a prominent example of an installation specifically developed to alter existing situations. Prior to the deployment of the installation, the park in front of the concert hall was primarily a trans...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Editor’s Preface
• Contents
• Introduction
• Media Architecture and the Smart City
• Using Media as Construction Material: Prototypes and Case Studies
• Designing Media Architecture: Technology, Tools and Processes
• About the Authors