Dezeen promotion: Improving sustainability, encouraging community and helping people navigate the data economy are some of the things that media architecture can offer.
Creative studio Squint/Opera and Dezeen hosted a panel on the topic of integrating and embedding sensors, screens and interactive media façades in architecture, public art, and the role this can play in urban life.
Squint/Opera founding director Alice Britton was joined on the panel by UNStudio founder Ben van Berkel, Ava Fatah gen. Schieck, a professor at the Bartlett School of Architecture. Dezeen editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs chaired the discussion.
Media architecture can include any structures with integrated displays, such as the moving visuals on a digital billboard or a shop window that lets users share their selfies. However Britton urged designers to look beyond standard displays to find ways of "making the invisible visible, bringing the inside out, displaying the narratives of a building" to create "a new, engaging way of telling stories about architecture".
Alice Britton spoke about media architecture at the talk
"I just think there are so many opportunities to be bold with media facades," said Britton.
"In terms of sustainability, there is a lot of data collected on the way people use buildings, but very few people use it to bring about change," she added.
Britton suggested that architects could create interactive facades that would display the energy con...