Giant Three-Sided LED Tower OK’d For LA’s Sunset Boulevard

October 24, 2016 by Dave Haynes

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City councillors in West Hollywood in LA have chosen a winner in a design competition for a digital OOH ad structure that will be seen by motorists and pedestrians along the famed Sunset Boulevard.

Called the West Hollywood Belltower, the three-sided vertical structure is anything but a digital billboard stuck on of a pylon. The screens are more akin to what people see on the big portrait LED marquees on the Las Vegas Strip, and the structure has an interior with ambient LED pedestrians will evidently be able to engage with their smartphones.

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The design blog Dezeen reports week that structure designed by Tom Wiscombe Architecture will be installed as a pilot project for a city-owned plaza. .

 

The exterior of the structure will be sheathed in perforated metal panels that will be embedded with LED technology, video screens and theatrical lighting.

The structure’s vertical orientation stands in contrast to the flat, horizontal billboards that currently line the Sunset Strip.

“It avoids the ‘sign-on-a-stick’ billboard typology in favour of something spatial and interactive,” the architect said. “It operates on the level of deep urban archetypes, such as ancient bell-towers, clock-towers and obelisks, which are associated with civic space and community engagement.”

The design also speaks to the ongoing hybridization of content and the idea that “media is no longer a just a way of advertising but a way of life”, the architect added.

The interior will contain a sculptural object that is programmed with both social media and interactive content. While visible to passing drivers, the object is primarily intended to engage pedestrians.

“Pedestrians can interact with it directly via apps on their smartphones, altering patterns of light pulled from the deep web, or ‘pushing’ digitally altered media content onto it,” the firm said.

Very nice. Though anything but cheap to do. From what I recall of driving that stretch of road, there are GIANT print billboards on or atop some buildings, often promoting films or album releases.

Interestingly, it doesn’t appear one of the national outdoor media companies has the ad concession. The ad partner on the project is Orange Barrel Media, which is in about a dozen US markets.

Hat tip to Digital Signage Pulse for flagging this piece …

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