The idea of bathing buildings in light goes back to the beginnings of the last century and Coney Island's wondrously illuminated Luna Park. Taking a leaf from that earlier crowd pleaser, advertisers filled Times Square's "Great White Way" with building-sized billboards gloriously festooned with all-manner of blinking, scrolling, and spinning colored lights.
Looking to the past and leaping into the future, GKD has engineered a product that combines the beauty, practicality, and transparency of metal fabric with the jazzy enchantment of moving lights.
"Mediamesh" is constructed of GKD's metal mesh, "Tigris", embedded with LEDs. Because the LEDs are literally woven into the structure, no transparency is lost—you can still see through the material. The embedded LEDs are programmed and controlled remotely through a web-based user interface.
The LEDs can be programmed to display everything from solid color to graphic messages. When unlit, the fabric has the appearance of woven stainless steel. When illuminated, the LEDs create a lit façade that envelopes the structure within.
As Stephan Kufferath, managing director of GKD, points out, "Architects and their clients are often looking for ways to incorporate media messaging into buildings and the best want it integrated and subtle. Mediamesh offers the perfect solution."
If ever there was an example of the medium being the message, Mediamesh is it.
