The crown jewel of the renovated 1100 Louisiana building lobby is the recently installed digital experience lobby wall, dubbed the 1100 Experience. [related]
The 4K LED display measures 32 feet wide by 18 feet high with a 36-foot diagonal distance, which makes it the largest known commercial office indoor digital installation of its kind in downtown Houston.
This new digital platform will provide tenants and visitors of 1100 Louisiana access to myriad art and local talent from the Houston region.
“Ownership wanted to capitalize on an already vibrant lobby and further enhance its experience through the integration of large-scale digital media,” said Hines senior property manager Mark Janssen.
“We worked with a team of innovators and have a great plan in place to bring a wide variety of unique content to tenants and visitors of 1100 Louisiana through a unique partnership with the community,” he said.
Hines teamed up with global architecture and design firm Gensler to create the immersive digital brand experience. The 1100 Experience features hours of digital experiences, including content that is dynamically generated around several themes.
Additionally, the 1100 Louisiana experience incorporates content and digital art created by Houston’s most celebrated visual and performing arts institutions, non-profit institutions, university students, local artists, NASA and many others.
Three Texas universities have signed up to contribute to the content and are working to adapt the curricula of their digital art departments around the new LED canvas.
The 1100 Experience is designed to constantly generate original content, drawing from four main themes: Beauty in Data, Change of State, Imagination Room and Living Wall.
The featured project was a collaboration of Gensler’s Digital Experience Design group and Brand Design teams–utilizing expertise from its Houston and Chicago offices. The original content was brought to life by the digital developers at Float4 of Montreal.
“In the context of today’s competitive real estate market, 1100 Louisiana was looking for a way to differentiate the property while providing an amenity that was entertaining and memorable,” said Jerry Alexander, Gensler principal in charge of the project.
Behind the 1100 Experience
“Additionally, Hines was looking to better connect to the community and provide a platform for partnership. We had a goal to create a series of experiences for tenants and guests that were new every time, familiar, yet always changing,” he said.
“Our hope is to attract people to the space and get them to want to pause in their day, stay a while and connect with others. Hines wanted to help celebrate the best of Houston while providing an immersive and memorable experience unique to the central business district.”
As part of the 1100 Louisiana lobby renovation, Hines and Gensler turned to NanoLumens to design a display that would engage the community with content from local organizations, museums and universities.
“1100 Louisiana is an iconic building in the heart of downtown Houston and this display, together with the content being shown, is a gift to the community,” said NanoLumens regional sales manager Eric Seigler. “We’re proud to be part of a team that made this gift possible.”
AV design-build integrator Conference Technologies, Inc. installed and commissioned the 576-square-foot LED wall for the lobby, which will be a community art piece and bring visual impact to a pillar of the commercial business district.
The sheer size of the direct view LED, compounded by limited site access with only 17 inches between the wall and the escalator, meant safety and innovative techniques were also vital throughout the process.
The 2.5mm pixel pitch display has a tightly compacted density, which means the resolution is impeccable and the exhibited images are crisp.
“With this pixel capability, it is an excellent display for creative content to be developed and pushed to the limits,” said John Powell, Conference Technologies, Inc.’s regional VP.
“We are excited to help inject technology into a cornerstone space in downtown Houston. Helping to refresh the design of buildings from the 70s and 80s is something at which Hines is at the forefront, and we are thrilled to be a part of it,” said Brent Baxter, Conference Technologies, Inc. design consultant.
“To have space where the community contributes and experiences the technology adds to the local atmosphere and the endurance of the placemaking goals a structure like 1100 Louisiana has on the district,” he said.
