Residential towers display digital media
Tucked away in London's Ilford neighborhood are two residential buildings that illuminate the city's skyline with color-changing light. The buildings, known as Pioneer Point, are lit with breathtaking LED media façades and are among the most unusual towers in London, thanks in part to the creative use of Color Kinetics.
Developers at Empire Property Group International teamed up with Global Design Strategies (GDS) and Architainment, Ltd. to create a bold lighting scheme with multimedia capabilities for the towers. Architainment supplied designers with 5,753 iColor Flex LMX LED nodes (now specificed with Flex Compact gen3, RGB), which were fitted within the interior of each tower's emergency staircase, creating a low-resolution digital wall on the corners of the buildings. The design is clearly visible through the towers' glass façades.
The digital walls feature daily video content with a variety of colors, directions, speeds, and shapes from sunset until midnight. The luminaires can be programmed to display effects for holidays and events, and can create the appearance of a bouncing ball or the illusion of pouring rain, depending on the light show.
The Pioneer Point towers complement the significant investment made to invigorate the Ilford town center. There is a restaurant on the ground floor, along with storage facilities and a gym for the tower's residents.
The installation, which was completed in 2011, has been an enormous success within the community. "Through a collaborative effort, we have produced a piece of art of which Ilford's residents can be proud," said Michael Kirchmann, CEO of GDS.
