Beyond The Weave: Steve Culver Discusses GKD Mediamesh

February 3, 2015

Mediamesh is a woven stainless steel fabric with integrated LEDs that is used to create a transparent digital display. This unique product is the perfect solution when a digital display is needed on a façade, yet the view through windows needs to be maintained or air flow is required. Mediamesh evolved from an architectural mesh product woven by GKD. GKD is s German-based Company who began as a weaver of industrial wire cloth in the 1920’s. These products were used in all types of industrial applications from filtration to aggregate screening to conveying. In the early 1990’s, architects began to look at these metal products and think about their potential uses in architecture. This is how architectural mesh was born.

As beautiful as architectural mesh is, customers still wanted more. They wanted to be able to have images, text, and video on these facades. Ag4 Mediatecture Company in Germany understood this and came up with the idea of a transparent media façade. After working on a couple of projects in the early 2000’s, Ag4 approached GKD about weaving LEDs into metal fabric. GKD came up with a way to do this, and the product became Mediamesh.

Steve Culver will be giving a short Mediamesh presentation at the Facades Plus Symposium in Los Angeles on February 5, 2015. In this presentation, he will examine the American Airlines Arena project in Miami, Florida that was completed in May, 2009. The Symposium focus is on Resiliency, and I will discuss the resiliency of GKD’s Mediamesh as it relates to its durability in resisting the elements, its flexibility in its broad spectrum of applications and uses, and its sustainability in the materials from which it is manufactured.

Steve Culver is the director of business development for Mediamesh at GKD. He joined GKD in 2013 and has 25 years of experience in sales and sales management. Culver has a bachelor’s of science from Penn State University and can be reached by e-mail at stevec@gkdusa.com.