Friday, March 21, 2008

Dexia Tower - The Quintessential Building



Walking around the corner from the Parisian inspired and cobblestone lined, martyred infested part of Brussels, we were bombarded with the visual of a dancing building. 

Never I my life have I ever seen something like this, let along comprehended that anything of this sort could or did ever exist. It was as if the Daft Punk Pyramid techs took things to the next level and made their next project a few scales larger. 

The 145m high Dexia Tower is comprised of 4200 windows that are each fitted with individually controlled LED bars. Basically, this turns the whole facade of the building into one large video screen. There is no was they retrofitted this, is there?!!?!

The 150, 000 multi-colored LED lights equal one rock star light show. Push play to some Datarock on your iPod, grab an cold Kwak beer, bundle up and your ready for a good 30 mins of entertainment. We were transfixed, this was without a doubt, almost unequivocally, one of the best and most unexpected parts of the trip.

Every LED fixture is controlled independently and every floor can control can be manipulated individually. Coming home from work you can view stock quotes and catch the current and next days weather.
 
As explained on the LAb[au]'s website: "the project displays tomorrow's temperature, cloudiness, precipitations, and wind, by using colors and geometrical patterns to visualize these data. A color-code corresponds to tomorrow temperature compared to the monthly average, liked to a scale of color-temperatures ranging from violet (-6 celcius or colder) all the way up to red (+6 celcius or warmer)." 

Besides being possibly the most awesome building I've ever seen, it also goes down as being the geekiest. 

This wonder of a building begs a few questions?
1. Can you get any work done from the inside with Daft Punk lights blasting all around your office
2. Do the other surrounding buildings have a major inferiority complex? 
3. What kind of astronomical electric bill do these people have?
4. How and when can we can of of these buildings over here in the States?

Check out the video and notice the awesome commentary, "das das bla bla das is so cool, das ist weeeeee!" No, thats not us mocking German tourists, we pulled this off the Internet as Luke accidently blanked his memory chip on the third day of the trip.


No comments: