May 5, 2008

Flare: Living Skin Facade

by Piers Fawkes in Design, Architecture

flare building skin

Flare_Webhead_L.htmlHot on the heels of the zero-enegry GreenPix media wall, comes Flare - a more analog solution to pixelated building walls. Flare is a ‘kinetic ambient reflection membrane’ that allows a building to express, communicate and interact with its environment.

The FLARE system consists of a number of tilt-able metal flake bodies supplemented by individually controllable pneumatic cylinders. Each metal flake reflects the bright sky or sunlight when in vertical standby position. When the flake is tilted downwards by a computer controlled pneumatic piston, its face is shaded from the sky light and this way appears as a dark pixel.By reflecting ambient or direct sunlight, the individual flakes of the FLARE system act like pixels formed by natural light.

Flare

[via Computerlove]

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3 Responses to “Flare: Living Skin Facade”

  1. amazing effect… a facade pong game might be a way to improve it :)

  2. Does this mean a higher energy bill for that building since each individual flake is powered to move? Its beauty is evident but the the thing that concerns me about this design is it consuming unnecessary resources without real purpose? If so,does this make it a poor design…mmm

  3. Floyd Hayes
    Posted from: 68.161.244.192

    May 6th, 2008 at 9:44 am

    They must have read Gibson’s “Idoru.”

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