Active Fa�ades: A New Medium?

Active Fa�ades A New Medium
Building fa�ades and walls are changing before our eyes, reacting with apparent intelligence to the news, the weather-even our physical proximity to the structures.

Some announce the activities they contain or the building's use and occupancy ("open to the public," for example, or "home team plays tonight"), in ways both transcendent and trite.

Others play games literally with the outside world, tricking the eyes of passersby or treating invited parties to both dialogue and diversion.

The range of these projects astounds, not so much for the content, but rather for what it portends for the future of architecture and the architect's role therein.

On Berlin's Potsdamer Platz, for example, an eleven-story double-glass wall shimmers with rapidly shifting artistic imagery: a computer screen on caffeine.

In the Jianbei district of Chongqing, China, a prominent 550-foot-long container for shops and offices exerts its presence through synchronized, rotating graphics that echo the commercial zone's numerous billboards.

And back in Germany, a balloonlike soccer stadium glowing red slowly fades to electric blue, announcing the jersey color of the visiting team taking the field that night.

With the highest-tech or more mundane means, a few architects are synthesizing edifice and communication in startling ways.