Designers: Edwin Schlossberg, Angela Greene, Matt McLaughlin, Lisa Barrette, Trip Kyle, Caroline Bevan Rojek, and .Alejandro Crawf, ESI Design, New York, New York, USA
Client: LaSalle Investment Management, Chicago, Illinois, USA
At an office building in Boston’s Financial District, fish swim through a kelp forest, quirky characters skip past, Red Sox fans dance, and a giraffe roams free. This is not a new surrealist painting, but rather a unique media experience. With 590 square-feet of reactive media displays, ESI Design created an epic-scale digital media band that playfully reacts to passersby. 110 High Street is a new entrance to Boston’s historic 50 Post Office Square, an iconic art deco office tower. The striking glass lobby now features a first-of-its-kind 84-foot digital media installation, named the Boston Media Band, that extends the experience of the building into the street while simultaneously bringing the energy of the city inside.
The Boston Media Band highlights the city outside the building and the bay just beyond. Like the glass lobby itself, the Boston Media Band breaks the barrier between inside and outside, broadcasting the building’s new identity to the street and drawing people in. The bespoke display surface is precisely integrated into the architecture, while its game engine-powered content is always fresh reflecting the human pulse of the space.
Through reactive behaviors and whimsical, unexpected moments, the Boston Media Band provides different experiences for viewers at various distances. Motion sensors located in the lobby ceiling and exterior wall support the reactivity of the media. The media features three distinct modes:
Silhouette Mode:
A parade of silhouettes stroll down the media band, mimicking the flow of people during their morning and evening commutes. The animated silhouettes are playful, inviting people into the lobby and projecting the energy of the building out to the sidewalk. As visitors and tenants enter the lobby itself, the silhouettes wave, dance, and react with surprisingly real humanity. Outfits based on the weather add another realistic layer to the silhouettes, while the rare appearance of a giraffe or moose and a range of different visual styles add a dreamlike quality. MAnd of course, this being Boston, the silhouettes also change their clothing and behaviors for major events like: Red Sox, Patriots, Celtics, and Bruins home games; The Boston Marathon; and the Fourth of July, Saint Patrick’s Day, and the winter holidays.
Bay Mode:
A serene underwater panorama takes over the lobby, filling the space with animated schools of fish based on species native to the Charles River and Massachusetts Bay. Scup, mackerel, bass and cod swim across the display and school around people who gather at the band. Appearances from whales and seals add moments of surprise, while a jellyfish emerges if you dwell by the media band long enough. All this activity takes place across three different aquatic environments and is illuminated by dynamic lighting that shifts over the course of the day.
Building ID Mode:
The media band also provides a platform to showcase the building’s brand and features customized tenant messaging. A simulated cloth texture background adds artistry and motion to this informative mode and serves as a neutral backdrop for the building logo. The result is a design that centers on the flow of the city and activates the lobby, plaza, and surrounding streetscape with movement and personality.
