If you’ve ever walked underneath a freeway or bridge, you know that it can be an intimidating experience. More often that not, it’s a hasteful walk to get to the other side, with cars, trains, and trucks that weigh many more tons than you whizzing above your head. During the day, it can be an uncomfortable walk. At night, depending on the neighborhood, it can be a dreadful one, with potential dangers lurking in every shadow.
In Tilburg, a city in the southwestern part of the Netherlands, Civic Architects pulled out all the stops to animate the underside of one overpass linking the city center with a once neglected, now redeveloped part of town known as De Spoorzone. Officially called the Willem II Passage (an extension of Willem II Street), it serves as a safe and convenient cultural space and point of connection.
Just behind the passage’s structural concrete walls rests an inner façade chalk full of familiar elements ? all of them presented at familiar scales but comprised of unfamiliar materials. Civic Architects consulted Van Tetterode Glass Studio and Philips Lighting about the 30,000 LEDs they ended up morphing into an interactive wall, all of them enclosed behind a glassy bond of sculptural bricks for a crystalline appearance. Programmed with an algorithm that’s responsive to pedestrian movement, time of day, and weather, the wall transforms into a living surface of diffused light without warning, accompanying people as they go by.
The pas...