Guest contribution MEDIA FACADES: When buildings start to twitter

deconarch.com is delighted to present you an exclusive guest contribution: In his article and the accompanying movie, architect Thomas Schielke writes about “Media facades: When buildings start to twitter”. The movie is a shortened version of the lecture, „The semiotics of media facades – When buildings start to twitter” that was presented at the Parsons The New School for Design in New York in 2010.

Schielke designed an extensive online guide for architectural lighting, leads lighting workshops and publishes articles on lighting design and technology internationally

Read more about Thomas Schielke and arclight below.

The timeline depicts international media facades with their different artistic, social or brand messages up to interfaces like iPhone Apps or brain sensors for public participation. The movie is a shortened version of the lecture, „The semiotics of media facades – When buildings start to twitter” that was presented at the Parsons The New School for Design in New York in 2010.

Luminous tweets and retweets
During the day, façade structures with their windows and material combinations grant a specific building image to the public. However, after sunset electrical light is the medium for an architectural image. The light appearance sends an atmospheric signal to the citizens like hang on in front of an asleep structure, look at an inviting but static façade or enjoy a vivid architecture sharing short stories. In the last decade, media facades have become a widespread element for luminous tweets. They establish a network between the building owner and the citizens, sometimes driven by aesthetical debates, other times by commercial intentions to avoid traditional light advertisement.
The pursuit of persuasion by way of big screens gives the impression that size receives a higher relevance than content, comparable with the large amount of trivial tweets in Twitter. Various media facades appear as monumental monologues repeating a fixed animation daily. A few facades use signals from the environment and transform them into a play of light and shadow. Others emerge as urban dialogues when buildings show combined moving pictures. Some even allow people to send messages to the building to receive luminous retweets. They turn the city into a community following the dialogue and with the respective Apps may possibly even gain a following community worldwide.

The historical overview of international projects covers various lighting methods and techniques from lighting designers as ag4, Arup Lighting, blinkenlights, Fusion, LAb[au], Licht Kunst Licht, L´Observatoire International, Mader Stublic Wiermann, Okayasu Izumi, magic monkey, Matthew Tanteri, Onur Sonmez , Qosmo, realities:united, StandardVision, Urbanscreens, Uwe Belzner, Yann Kersalé and architecture like Asymptote Architecture, Frank Gehry, Jean Nouvel, O.M. Ungers, Peter Cook, Peter Marino, UN Studio, schneider + schuhmacher, Simone Giostra, WOHA architects1. Artists like Doug Aitken, Jaume Plensa, Kurt Hentschläger and Zhong Song are included in the timeline as well.

Thomas Schielke
www.arclighting.de

Thomas Schielke, born 1973, studied architecture at the University of Technology in Darmstadt, Germany. During the course of his studies he worked as a research assistant at the department for Building Design and Lighting Technology for Prof. Hofmann.

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”. This book covers the actual qualities of light, the relationship between light and space, finally, the dimension of light as it relates to culture – based on paired terms to explore the design dimension of light.

Additionally, he lectures at different universities.
His dissertation at the University of Technology in Darmstadt analyses architectural lighting.

Tags: buildings, guest contribution, light, Light Perspectives - between culture and technology, Thomas Schielke, twitter