Dutch Firm Partners With LG, Gensler On Transparent OLED Office Partition Walls

July 14, 2022 by Dave Haynes

A Dutch company that specializes in the super-niche business of partition walls for workplaces has come up with a version, in partnership with LG, that replaces solid or glass/plastic divider panels with transparent OLED versions that can run updated or ambient content.

Maars Living Walls has developed a showroom that demonstrates the idea of making more and better use of partitions that create some privacy and structure in otherwise open office floor plans.

The two companies engaged the digital wing of architectural design giant Gensler to develop reference content for the product, which has the more Korean than Dutch product name of M923. digital. The M923 line-up already includes a series of static panel options that include whiteboards and sound absorbing panels.

The pitch, as laid out in the video below, is that digital signage for workplace communications shifts from being add-ons attached to available wall space or suspended from ceilings, to something that is an architectural element. It’s not something added to a wall – it’s part of the wall and the intended design.

The other key argument is that this sort of thing can be thematic and easily changed – so that a space equipped with these living digital walls can be a meeting space, a showroom area, or run ambient content for socialization and even meditation.

I remember having conversations, years ago, with a company that was pitching the notion of embedding smaller LCD displays – like 30 inchers – in half-height cubicle partition walls, also for digital signage applications. But those units would have been much thicker, non-transparent and viewable only from one side. I don’t think the concept really got much traction.

This approach is more interesting, but I suspect has a limited number of adopters, as transparent OLEDs are going to seriously multiply the unit cost of an office divider panel. This is the sort of thing you will see go into media and tech companies that like their bling and have the budgets. I don’t think you’ll see this in the project managers section of an engineering firm anytime soon.

So far, this is just a conceptual showcase. There are no units in the field.