Now that's architainment

Rundle Lantern Australia
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The vast façade of modern-day architectural designs around the world have presented lighting and AV manufacturers with a canvas in which to create and display their innovative technologies on. Kelly Lewis takes a look at some of the most sophisticated architaiment displays around the world.

To transform the façade of an inner city car park, located in the hub of Adelaide’s, (South  Australia) shopping and entertainment precincts, in replace of a more ‘cultural canvas’, the Adelaide City Council conducted a design competition to see what might be offered.

Adelaide-based design firm Fusion, won the contract with its design to permanently wrap an eight-story car park building, with a large-scale illuminated LED canvas dubbed the Rundle Lantern.
 
Fusion’s brief was not to transform the cityscape into downtown Las Vegas. It was, according to designer Damien Mair, “to capture the imagination of the city”.

The Lantern operates nightly and can be programmed to display graphics, an infinite array of lights, colours and morphing designs, light shows and video content.

Mair says the driving concept behind the project was to create a visual device that  people could directly interact with.

The first phase of the Lantern’s interactive ability is currently allowing people to create content for delivery on the LED canvas.

To upload the content for the façade, Mair says the project features simulator software (FLEX web).

“The simulator is an online application that allows people to upload and preview how the image or video content would appear if it was delivered on the Rundle Lantern,” he says.

“Once a user has uploaded the imagery, they can then preview it in 3D as it would appear wrapped around Lantern. Optionally, once uploaded, the content can be download it for viewing, which is useful for when crafting content in an iterative fashion.” 

Future plans for the Lantern’s interactivity, to be rolled-out in due course, will include a publicly accessible interactive surface that Mair says will enable manipulation through touch or movement, as well as a solution for remote mobile phone interactions.

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“The PHD students work with alternative computer interaction devices and together we are exploring how these technologies can be incorporated into the Lantern.”

 An architect for the project, David Brown, says the venture is a first in Australia, both architecturally and technically.

“The existing car park has been a part of the landscape for years, it’s on a prominent corner in the heart of the city and was particularly unsightly,” he claims.

“Recladding a building was nothing new, but cladding a naturally ventilated 30-year-old car park is something that hadn’t been tried before. But, the real first for Australia is the large scale LED façade.

“There are plenty of large screen television screens around the country, but nothing on this scale that is specifically designed as an artistic installation and not for advertising.”  

The US$1.3 million encases 1066 metres of display area (nine storeys high) around the building and as it relies entirely on natural ventilation to expel exhaust fumes, the project called for purpose-built LED housings.

Mair’s concept was to construct the display from 754 individual anodised aluminium tiles individually angled to allow maximum viewing from the streets below, but offering minimal impediment to the building’s natural air flow.

“The biggest challenge we faced with the existing building, was the structure as it’s rated as a ‘naturally vented car park’.

This meant we had to find a lateral way to install a façade on the building without hampering the airflow,” says Mair.

Due to the design challenges he explored variations of cladding the building using a wide variety of materials, including mesh, plastics and perforated sheets.

“We came up with the idea of using aluminium panels angled like louver windows, which provides the dual benefit of airflow and positioning the panels to appear as a flat façade from street level,” Mair says.

“Once we decided on this, we experimented with different surface colours and textures of the aluminium. At one stage, we considered using aluminium with perforated holes, but we discarded this as it didn’t provide the effect we were after.