Media Architecture Biennale Awards Announced

The awards ceremony took place near the end of MAB14, which is billed as "a conference, an exhibition, an award show and a number of workshops [with] the world’s top experts exchanging ideas and outlining the media architecture of the future." The five categories – Animated Architecture, Spatial Media Art, Money Architecture, Participatory Architecture, and Trends and Prototypes – cover the range of so-called media architecture, with their winners sharing, according to the jury, "the ability to integrate different layers – and to have an impact on people and cities." The winners are highlighted below, with descriptions from MAB, and the other nominated projects can be viewed at the MAB website. The next Media Architecture Biennale takes place in Sydney in 2016.

Winner Animated Architecture: Energy Tower Façade Lighting (Denmark)
"The façade is designed by Erick van Egeraat and consists of two layers: The inner layer is the ‘skin’, providing the actual climatic barrier and allowing the second layer to be treated more freely. This second layer is made of raw umber-coloured aluminium plates with an irregular pattern of laser cut circular holes. The plates are treated to give them the desired colour and patina at day time. At night, the programmable lighting, installed between the two facades, gives the building an additional metaphor, and lights up surrounding Roskilde as a new and already popular landmark. The architectural concept of the façade lighting designed by Erick van Egeraat was identified and implemented by Gunver Hansen with the lighting solution, provided by Martin Professional."

Winner Spatial Media Art: Light Barrier (Russia and South Korea)
"Kimchi and Chips create phantoms of light in the air, crossing millions of calibrated beams with their work Light Barrier. This light installation creates floating graphic objects which animate through space as they do through time. 'They tell a story only using light. That’s very interesting,' Dr. Gernot Tscherteu said in when explaining why this project won a category with many strong submissions. Light Barrier was co-commissioned by FutureEverything and The British Council. It premiered at New Media Night Festival in Nikola-Lenivets, 2014."

Winner Money Architecture: Dia Lights (Denmark)
"In May 2013, The Confederation of Danish Industry (DI) moved back into their rebuilt headquarters in the heart of Copenhagen. The extensive architectural task has been carried out by Transform who has redesigned the physical manifestation of the DI. The different designs have been turned into generic light plugins that fit into Kollision’s player-system. These light plugins can be controlled by the graphical department at DI who can tweak and modify parameters like speed, colors, and direction creating thousands of different expressions. All these light designs can be previewed in the 3D player system displaying each of the +80000 LEDs. The system holds potentials for adding interactive components, allowing the citizens to interact directly with the façade."

Winner Participatory Architecture: digitalMatatus (Kenya)
"Technology is transforming the way we relate to transit. Digital Matatus is a key player in the movement to make transportation in the developing world more efficient, and open. A collaborative project of the University of Nairobi, Columbia University’s Center for Sustainable Urban Development, MIT’s Civic Data Design Lab, and Groupshot. Digital Matatus has developed and deployed purpose-built mobile phone apps to more efficiently collect location data of Nairobi’s buses. They have used the information gathered through this crowd sourcing method to produce standardized bus routes for the city, now assembled together and made available in a full city-wide bus map released to the public in January of 2014."

Winner Trends and Prototypes: MegaFaces (Russia)
"MegaFaces Pavilion is a structure incorporating the world’s first large scale actuated LED screen / kinetic facade conceived by Asif Khan and engineered by iart at the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics for MegaFon. Formed by 11,000 actuators, the kinetic facade of MegaFaces is able to tranform in three dimensions to create visitors’ faces in Mount Rushmore-style monumental scale. Facial impressions are relayed to the facade from 3D photo booths within the building and across Russia. A queuing system manages the data and visitor names are displayed on screens indicating the time their face will appear."