Digital Façade Design for our cities’ urban fronts

Digital facades on buildings have become an attractive way to grab eyeballs on a magnificent scale in the current day and age: the building becomes the canvas and sophisticated technologies allow for impactful narratives to be effortlessly relayed on to a huge audience, multiplying the intended user group and the media’s message manifold.

In many famous cases across the world, digital façades become the very identity of the building, where they are used for public announcements, to show solidarity with a world event, for the celebration of festivals, or simply to issue a message in the public interest. Given the right location, they can act as wonderful activators of urban space, instilling it with ever-bustling movement. Further, used rightly, a robustly told narrative through visual aid can be among the best tools there are for mass awareness. 

While digital facades can simultaneously act as a façade lighting, a piece of art, a surface for advertising, and even a jumbotron, they present an unprecedented opportunity for the cosmetic refurbishment of a number of buildings and most of the glass skyscrapers dotting major metropolitan cities. The transformative effect it can have on its immediate local context is invariably important and noteworthy. Furthermore, a number of buildings with even remarkable facades lose their sense of attraction post sundown and fall into the diurnal circle of activation only during work hours. 

The challenge was to design a digital façade on the Torra Velasca, Milan, Italy to act as an activator, for itself and the immediate surrounding, and to add an additional layer of dynamism and post operation-hours utility to the building. The façade must look to utilize innovative details for it to be applied to an existing building while also taking into account the building’s usage during day time. A narrative must guide the design, preferably to be telecasted on the facade itself, which can be derived either from the local context of the building or a relevant social message to be relayed to the public. 

The jury for the competition consisted of esteemed designers, professionals, and academicians from around the world. The Lead Jurors for the competitions were as follows: 

Carola Vannini, Owner, Carola Vannini Architecture, Rome, Italy

Paolo Didonè, Co-founder, Didonè Comacchio architects, Italy

Devvy Comacchio, Co-Founder, Didonè Comacchio Architects, Italy

Some of the Best of competition projects are:

 

Winning Project: Velasca Farm

By: Huiqin Ma, Yue SONG, Zhang Junrui & 跃 宋

     

Description: ‘Velasca Farm’ is inspired by the once-popular online planting game. The design aims to create a natural building facade while guiding people to live a healthy life and creating an ecological urban environment.

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People’s Choice: CITY SHOWROOM

By: Jingjing Li, 昊淼 王, Yuqing Yang & Xiaotian Cheng

Description: City showroom uses an interactive digital facade to activate the commercial vitality of the Milan fashion industry. We create a changeable adaptive façade with LED screens to display narrative stories and rich advertising images so that people can feel the development of Milan's fashion culture and activate the vitality of the region.

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   Editor’s Choice: MILAN LIGHTHOUSE

By: YaNing Xie, XINNING ZHAO & MA ZIKAI

Description: Torre velasca can gather information inwardly, also can scatter outward to generate influence. The city is regarded as a "museum", and a series of public spaces become "exhibits". The digital facade juxtaposes and superimposes various public spaces in Milan, and people trigger the explanation of the "exhibits" at the corresponding places.

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Editor’s Choice: Concerto di Milano

By: 远晴 张

Description: Torre Velasca is no longer silent, it has a direct dialogue with the citizens. The silent protector becomes an elegant listener and communicator.

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Editor’s Choice: Hive Mind

By: 文睿 赵 & 艺竹 蔡

Description: The traditional digital facade is the product of consumerism. Most of the contents displayed cater to the mainstream values, and its significance and function have great limitations. Our design maximizes the activation of local space by introducing drones with a greater emphasis on human interaction.

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Editor’s Choice: GLOW-A-VINE

By: Chris Chung

Description: Glow-A-Vine is a digital façade system that uses perennial vines (Clematis Bees Jubilee), LEDs, and photosynthesis to create a dynamic digital and natural display system.

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Editor’s Choice: Hide n Seek (Prima Facie)

By: Luca Parlangeli & Alessandro Passoni

Description: The project is inspired by the historical criticism around the Velasca but can accommodate all the contemporary hot topics; the narrative unfolds over 24 hours linking the day and night layouts of the building. The new facade is covered externally with a mirroring film which makes the Velasca disappear depending on the panel's layout and the hour of the day.

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Editor’s Choice: Collective Memory

By: 鍾金寶

Description: The background of this project is based on the combination of traditional and modern urban space in the center of Milan, Italy, and the responsiveness, performance, and interactive entertainment of the lighting value generated by the fusion of the complex and long past and the present.

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Discover the design brief here: https://uni.xyz/competitions/prima-facie/info/about

Discover the full results here: https://uni.xyz/competitions/prima-facie/entries

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