VISUAL RESPONSE

Words :: Lindsay Brown // Images :: Urban Visuals

In the 1960s a seminal group of ‘utopian’ architects known as Archigram conceived of a number of futuristic and mostly conceptual projects in which digital connectivity and lighting were integral to the exterior and interior skins of buildings. Technical difficulty and cost, however, prevented these projects from being realized.
Thanks to recent innovations, a single laptop can now drive complex digital lighting and communication designs, which means that after a hiatus of over four decades some of Archigram’s ideas are finally being brought to fruition, and in public architectural spaces we are now seeing a panoply of new hybrid digital forms known as “intelligent lighting.”
Urban Visuals, a small but internationally well-established Vancouver company, is a forerunner in the design of intelligent lighting systems. UV uses a mix of digital media and information technologies, video and data projection, motion graphics and innovative light sources for their work in interior and architectural design, television set design, and the staging of large-scale public events. UV has worked abroad extensively, notably in London, Los Angeles and Tokyo, but has recently turned its focus back to archictectural projects in Vancouver.
Urban Visuals was founded in 1997 by creative director Konstantinos Mavromichalis and technical director Nathan Whitford, who met after their studies in visual arts and IT. For the past ten years they have been working in architectural spaces creating site-specific, immersive sensory environments they describe as “image landscapes.” On the basis of their trademark cinematic visuals for large events, Urban Visuals was in 2002 hired on as part of the creative team for Zed TV. Their highly recognizable, atmospheric production design for Zed earned them a Gemini nomination for Best Visual Effects in 2003 and a 2004 Emmy nomination for Advanced Interactive. It also caught the attention of MTV in New York for whom they have provided similar effects. Recently, they have been bringing this very same design formula to architecture and interiors.
Urban Visuals’ most recent architectural project is a large-scale digital display for the Seymour Street façade of the new Vancouver International Film Centre. UV’s aim was to make a ‘living façade’ where digital media is an extension of the architecture. Installation of UV’s media and lighting system for the façade is now underway and will feature an extensive LED marquee lighting display and a backlit 24-foot-wide video projection screen overlooking the street. By adapting software developed by Apple, UV have designed a system in which the film schedules and identity graphics that are displayed on the screen are fed by a simple blog operated by the film centre staff. The movement and pixel colour change on the screen then drive an LED lighting system that extends from the screen and out along the whole face of the glass façade. Effectively, the whole building communicates, glowing as if it were a flickering cinematic screen.
Other ongoing pursuits include media and lighting design consultation for the Japanese design firm Creative Intelligence Associates Inc., well-known for its flagship retail and corporate spaces in Japan, including Gap and Nike.

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