< Building Decoration

Building Clad LED video screens add new outdoor-advertising punch!!

For years, signs have appeared on building walls and roofs. More recently, vinyl wraps have scaled alpine heights as they cover building walls. Now, LED video screens can completely cover building façades and present kaleidoscopic images that dance across the building.

Built as part of the building's cladding, or "skin," dynamic video screens have given architects a new theme that enables them to "display" buildings' corporate identities on a large scope

Video screen cladding is a victory for both architects and advertisers. LEDs' flexibility almost pre-ordained their architectural surface application. Also, programmable light and video shows, which represent tenants on their own building façades, answer their deepest advertising needs. Even building owners benefit from additional revenue and acclaim as a tourist destination.

Currently, at least a dozen skyscrapers worldwide have embraced LED video walls. Most video-emblazed buildings stand in Times Square. However, the phenomenon has migrated overseas to major, urban centres, mostly in Asia, but also in Europe. Image content varies. Some screens serve as billboards, but others subtly combine branding and art.

As a new medium, these screens become more than just signs. "Media façades also bring a public-service component to the mesh display. They not only advertise and brand, they also transmit art and culture. At some point, the use of the screens becomes collaboration between the building's tenants and the surrounding community to present a world view of what they're about."

These screens present a complete, low-resolution, full-colour, video image, which can be viewed during the day or night.

While LED lighting has become very "che-che" with architects, a few visionary building developers see the value of video walls as part of their buildings' design. Ideally, a perfect design would combine both lighting and video into a complete, visual motif

A building is normally defined by its exterior shape and, in some instances, the use of exterior lighting, which emphasizes that shape.

"Up to now, architecture has been about fitting buildings into 3-D space," Yamamoto said. "Video screens that completely cover a building's surface change the equation of how a building occupies that space. In a sense, a video screen covering a building surface places it in a fourth dimension, where pictorial and iconic imagery now become a representational feature of how the building presents itself."

Unforgettable images
Architecture has transformed buildings into signs that function less as billboards but more as outdoor, urban, community bulletin boards and cultural canvases. In this venue, messages and graphics must accommodate a building's huge scale and balance their visual impact with the surrounding urban space. The displays juggle advertising, branding, art and cultural imagery with such grandeur; they won't be forgotten by viewers. What more could you ask of a sign?

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