christoph wagner architekt*innen

1,014 ring-shaped and 760 bar-shaped fluorescent light tubes served as pixels, forming a giant low-resolution, grey scale matrix.

A central computer individually controlled the brightness of every single light. As a result, movies, graphics, and animation sequences could be displayed on the façade as moving luminous images transforming the building’s shell into a communicative membrane.

The aim was for the media installation to continue the structural logic defined by the architecture instead of concealing or contradicting it. On the one hand, the considerable overall size of the installation became economically feasible by reducing the resolution and doing without color. But on the other hand—and more importantly—giving this media installation the right resolution, size, and dimension was a necessary prerequisite for acting on the architectural scale of the surrounding Potsdamer Platz quarter.

für realities:united, Berlin (Projektarchitekt)

Berlin, Germany