Essay

I invite you to think about how you can use dynamic installations within your built form designs to enhance effects for your occupants as they travel and experience your buildings. For example, with video installations you may make a statement, create a new kind of beauty or even “reframe” something that has been in existence without changing for a long time.

The Crown Fountain in Millennium Park, Chicago, presents quite a unique experience. Through video that is integrated into its built form, this design brings forth activity, meaning and engagement for its users. As you can see in the image above, the video (of the face) has been set to synchronize with natural elements that are also in motion — and as water springs forward, human curiosity to engage is triggered.

By giving built form a way to reframe its context in real time — where LED lights light the front face of each tower as water streams outward — the combination between nature (in this case water), built form, and video create such a unique dialogue that those experiencing it will likely not forget it anytime soon.

The use of video within built form can take on other approaches as well.

With video installation you also have the power to personalize in a new way, to transform with changing times very easily, and to play with scale and timing anew. Additionally, video can serve to instruct building occupants, to motivate or inspire them, or to comfort them if they are suffering.

So as you design architecture, think strategically about the installations which will inhabit your built form once constructed. Realize that more than just placement of a video installation is important, and that what is played on the video installation can contribute to or detract from your design.

For example, think of how video could be used in a hospital room for patients recovering from surgery. Yes, in many hospitals today you see televisions which allow patients to distract themselves by watching television shows on various channels, but what if you could convey more to the patient through a video installation that is designed to work with their environment to help them through the various stages of healing?

So my reminder is simply this — create your installations as integrated into your design. You will find that your design will become less dependent upon such installations, or conversely, that your design will benefit greatly from having a well thought out and strategic installation embedded.

So, as you experience different buildings today while going about your daily life, pay attention to the various built form video installations. Look at what they are doing for the space and for the people within, and think about how they could be made better to improve the quality of life for those that experience them.

Image Credit: © Patrick Haney | Flickr