Video | Urban Branding: Media facades and their luminous tweets
Brands strive worldwide for distinctive visual identities in the urban landscape. At night they rely on luminous messages ranging from conventionally illuminated signs and billboards up to dynamicluminous architecture for story telling. Therefore, media facades have turned into a fascinating medium to create an architectural image in the nocturnal city. Some brands use guerrilla lighting projections for temporary installations to subversively transform urban spaces. Other companies equip their flagship stores with large LED pixel screens for high-resolution images or they consider the building façade as an interface for more artistic solutions. Often video screens appear as decorated elements competing for attention with traditional commercial billboards. Here media facades have become an interesting alternative to establish a more sophisticated design language for merging the dynamic content with the building. Whereas some luminous facades appear as monumental monologues repeating a fixed animation daily, some installations even allow people to interact with the building to receive enlightening responses. Thereby, the consumer becomes part of the urban marketing strategy to shape a vivid and progressive brand identity. This lecture by the German architect Thomas Schielke will give an overview about media facades for urban brand communication and addresses questions like: Will the energy consumption of luminous facades go along with the desire to introduce sustainability? To which extent do neighbours accept obtrusive luminous content? Further, what kind of media facades will shape the future of urban branding with luminous tweets?
Thomas Schielke studied architecture at the University of Technology in Darmstadt, Germany. He has been in charge of the didactic and communication division at the lighting manufacturer ERCO since 2001 where he designed an extensive online guide for architectural lighting, leads lighting workshops and publishes internationally articles on lighting design and technology. He is author of the book "Light Perspectives - between culture and technology". Additionally, he has taught lighting design at different universities and was invited for lectures at institutions like MIT, Columbia GSAPP and Penn State University. His research interests focus on qualitative lighting design. Thereby, he examines in which way light could be used to interpret architecture and to express a semantic quality. Further, he explores the development of contemporary light patterns, technologies and visualisation techniques to detect historical influences and to critically discuss the progress of light and architecture. For more information: www.arclighting.de
