COLOUR AND LIGHT IN THE MEDIA ARCHITECTURE ENVELOPE: KINETIC AND LUMINOUS EFFECTS ON BUILDING FAÇADE

In the contemporary architectural project, the realization of media facades is growing up. In the collective imagination these systems refer only to an architectural skin made by electronic tools: large bright screens, video walls and architectural projection systems, very different from each other, but still always of luminous and informative type.
The media façade can change its image and, at the same time, its form, not only perceptually with the aid of digital artificial instruments or with the actual usual coloured coatings, but also with a “simple” movement of its components. These are panels and mechanisms more or less dependent on each other and with the building, poly or monochromatic, transparent or opaque, metallic or plastic, etc. Their movement can be created with purely kinetic systems (automatisms), hydraulic systems or pneumatic ones.
The aim of this contribution is to investigate how technologies and systems currently in use for the construction of mechanical façades (for kinetic, pneumatic and hydraulic systems) influence the perception of colour and light on the contemporary architectural surfaces and their interaction with the surrounding urban space. In this analysis we will include natural and artificial parameters and systems.