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- Project: schneider + schumacher
- Date: December 2011 - April 2012
- Client: Deutsches Architekturmuseum Frankfurt
- Contractor: schneider+schumacher
- Partner: Sound For Friends
- Location: Deutsches Architekturmuseum, Frankfurt/Main
- Tasks: Media system design + implementation
schneider+schumacher are among the most prominent contemporary architects in Germany, having built a slew of important buildings all over the country, and especially in our mutual home town. Having collaborated before, it was a natural for us to help them add a digital twist to their solo exhibition at the Deutsches Architekturmuseum D.A.M.
Together we devised the concept of an inverted panorama, where a cubic structure erected in the darkened central hall of the museum was covered in architectural imagery shot for the exhibition by photographer Kirsten Bucher.
The concept of the installation of course is much influenced by schneider + schumachers architectural language, which at times is deceptively simple yet always meticulous in detailing, utilitaristic, down to earth and humane with a healthy disregard for glitzy gadgets or pointless decoration. Consequently for the D.A.M. we spared the usual interactivity to create a show that’s to be watched and walked about.
With only one exception, an analog video toy if you will – the red entrance wall is a shadow play with the schneider+schumacher logo projected with a separate projector in red on red. Only the shadows of the visitors form the typography of the logo as they pass the cones of one, but not the other beamer.
Exhibitions on architecture are typically a little low on budget, so creating a high-quality panorama more than 26 metres long is still quite a technical challenge moneywise. We like challenges, of course, so we came up with a system of 21 rather basic office-grade video projectors fed by only 4 computers, and made sure that the architects’ team was able to do much of the work on the VVVV-based animations themselves. (courtesy of media-jack-of-all-trades Ragunath Vasudevan).
So all in all this project came in on a relatively low budget and still serves a quite impressive 21504000 pixels in real time.
Update: The show will be continued at the Zumtobel Forum in Vienna, opening in May.
The MESO Team: Alexander Graf, Nils Buhlert, Philipp Steinweber, Phillipp Lorenz, Benjamin Schiek, Max Wolf
Till Schneider revealing some secrets about the exhibition at a Pecha Kucha Lecture in Darmstadt before the opening.