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Martin by HARMAN helps MODE Architectural at Nine Two Nine Office Tower

Wed, 30 Nov 2016 10:55

929 Office Tower atrium


MODE Architectural recently deployed Martin by HARMAN LED fixtures and video processors to create a unique and highly interactive lighting installation in the atrium of the Nine Two Nine Office Tower in Bellevue, Washington. The piece is composed of intersecting LED strips that light up and create patterns in response to real-time traffic and weather data, as well as physical movement within the atrium itself. Designers Bob Bonniol and Pablo Molina selected Martin products for their exceptional reliability, efficiency and world-class technical support.

“The atrium functions as a meeting place for people, with a lot of intersecting and crossing lines,” said Bonniol. “If you look at the navigation charts for airplanes or ships, you’ll see lots of ‘ley lines’, which are the lines of travel between waypoints. Places where ley lines intersect tend to be very powerful places, like Chicago or Hong Kong. I wanted to create an installation for the atrium that could reflect that idea, and I instantly began to think about using Martin’s creative LED products to create intersecting lines of pixels on the wall. We thought it would be a very exciting and interesting piece to look at.”

MODE created the piece using custom configurations of several Martin LED products, including dozens of VC-Strip LED video strips cut to custom lengths, a P3 PowerPort 1500 power and data processor with custom coding, and a P3-200 System Controller that enables DVI and SDI signals to be mapped onto the VC-Strips. Lighting systems integrator 4Wall Entertainment collaborated with Martin to manufacture custom extrusions to house the video strips, as well as a custom frosted front filter that makes the light softer and more expressive.

The piece is a permanent installation and is designed to operate continuously for a minimum of 10 years, so reliability was key. The building was also constructed using stringent green environmental standards, so the piece needed to be incredibly energy efficient to maintain its LEED gold building certification.

The sculpture uses the sensing system from Google’s autonomous cars to track people and objects moving through the atrium. The sensing system inputs data to a bespoke system that was created by MODE, which then feeds accurately mapped content to the Martin processor. The system also collects traffic data from the Department of Transportation and weather data from the National Weather Surface. The content on the video strips moves faster when traffic is heavy, and changes direction depending on the wind.

Implementing such an ambitious and innovative design required close collaboration between MODE Architectural and the HARMAN Professional solutions team, who travelled to the site to help with coding and programming the system.





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