Continuing our look into large scale interactives, an important question emerges: how can these tools be utilised effectively in modern urban development?

When cities grow so do their roads. Think of cities like LA or even Auckland with intertwining overpasses heavy laden with traffic. What happens to the forgotten spaces below? Usually you find them littered with fast food wrappers, graffiti and unsavoury characters.

In Amsterdam, a media architecture collective called Urban Alliance won a competition for ideas to improve the public space of a socially unsafe area. They’ve used one of these dark vacant underpasses to their advantage to create an interactive urban wallpaper. The 24-metre long wall of a pedestrian tunnel in Biljimer is now lined with 2,500 LEDs and covered with a ribbed semi-transparent wall. The curves in the wall make it less vulnerable to graffiti, something underpasses are usually riddled with. The resolution is stretched horizontally, so images appear to be in better focus from the side enabling the display to be viewed from safer areas outside of the tunnel and to deter people from using the tunnel as a hangout spot. As people walk through the tunnel the lights react to movement and brighten up a once unsafe and uninviting area.

Who knows, maybe one day taggers will ditch their magic markers in favour of digital graffiti.

Watch more about it on YouTube. 

Thanks to fellow Click Suite designer, Kelly Stubbs, for shining the light on this great piece of work. 

Images via CUBE-architecten.