An interactive sculpture that explores making the visible invisible within Arup's global headquarters.
Client
Arup
Programme
Interactive Sculpture
Project Lead
DaeWha Kang Design
Year
2015
Introduction
Heart of Arup was the prize winner in the 2016 No.8 at Arup competition.
The sculpture was an exploration of making visible the invisible, by materialising the social media posts of Arup’s 13,000 global employees onto a physical installation within the Fitzroy Street global headquarters. Individual posts appear on the acrylic leaves in real-time, and as new posts arrive, older posts shift up towards the top of the atrium.
The design challenge
Activate the large, seven-storey atrium in Arup’s global headquarters building in a way that improves communication and camaraderie among the 12,000 employees.
The design solution
Our focus on human wellbeing has increasingly led us into the realm of interactive design, as we seek direct connection with employee sentiments and engagement with data analytics. In addition to the six-storey high aluminium and acrylic mobile, this project incorporated advanced technology in projection mapping and real-time web scraping from various internal Arup systems.
The material and formal language of the sculpture was selected to integrate into the main space. Drawing on the metallic and transparent materials already within the space, the final material palette was made up of stainless steel cables, aluminium metal plate, and acrylic sheet for projection.
Projection mapping allows a smaller number of projectors to animate a large number of the individual leaves. The project required us to solve many technical issues, from the geometric distortion of projectors to shine on leaves without creating distracting light in the background, to managing the brightness of the images when projecting in a daylit space, and selecting the best type of acrylic for maintaining legibility and transparency at the same time.
Client
Arup
Location
London, UK
Year
2015
Programme
Interactive Sculpture
Size
7 stories high
Status
Complete
Design Architect
DaeWha Kang Design
Design Team
DaeWha Kang, Aleksander Dynarek, Monika Byra
Arup Engineering
Laura Sims, Peter Lenk, Francesco Anselmo, John Sykes, Tania Milinkovich, Sarah Clark, Toby Clark, Hele West, Warren Russell, Ed Forwood, Duncan Steel
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