Interactive Lobby Video Wall Creates A Unique Immersive Experience

Gensler is the leading global architecture, design and planning firm, with its 3,500 employees in 43 locations across 14 countries, and a 2013 workload that included more than 2,000 clients.

Add to this the concept, unveiled in May 2013, that revolutionizes the traditional commercial lobby space, showing Gensler to be a convincing innovator. Its recent integration of a suite of advanced technologies—including Planar's Clarity™ Matrix LCD Video Wall System—invites visitors into the building and virtually enchants them with an opportunity for immersive exploration of the company, its ideas, capabilities and projects.

Planar is part of best-in-class partnership

Having selected Planar for its best-in-class video wall technology, Gensler entered into close collaboration with a billion-pixel interactive agency, The Hive, to create the immersive exploratory platform it calls the Gensler/Hive Multi-Surface Experience. This platform features a touch-enabled table on which a visitor selects content about Gensler and its work in numerous locations worldwide. The user browses through the content and then views selected information in larger-than-life form on the array of Planar displays, in 4k playback enabled by YCD | Wall.

According to Alan Robles, Associate, of Gensler, both staff and lobby visitors have called the experience "amazing". The displays are especially important, because in combination with the interactive interface they help represent a new and highly flexible communication platform for architects and designers. "Equally important, they give us the flexibility to enrich both the content with emerging forms and sources of media, and even change the whole lobby experience going forward."

Clarity Matrix features portray Gensler as a dynamic enterprise

Installed in May of 2013, the experience features Planar's Clarity Matrix MX55 video wall displays in a two-by-two (2 x 2) array. "We wanted to maintain the quality of our 4k resolution content in order to deliver the most impactful visual experience to the viewer. With the Clarity Matrix we didn't have to compromise, because it was able to match our standards of quality," says Yahav Ran, The Hive's Cofounder and Multi Display Expert.

Robles says the best-in-class philosophy of all the project partners mandated a video wall that would deliver at the highest level in many different ways. "It was essential to us that every part of the solution portray Gensler as a dynamic enterprise. Planar clearly understood that and provided a video wall solution that allows the lobby space to make a strong statement about our commitment to the innovative execution of architecture and design."

With the Clarity Matrix MX55 video wall, Planar has delivered a solution that focuses one's attention on the quality of the content. Features that make this possible include industry-leading brightness (700 nits), high definition resolution (1920 x 1080), and a superior contrast ratio (3500:1). These attributes are critical considering that the Gensler lobby has a large, street-facing glass wall which fills the space with light. "Even in such a high-bright environment, the Clarity Matrix video wall performs really well and any content one selects in the experience just sparkles," Robles says.
He says further that the lobby experience had to be dynamic and active, reflecting the dynamism of Gensler itself. "A static solution would not work; we needed the ability to show our progress, growth and success in a vibrant manner." Planar enabled the Clarity Matrix with a range of inputs (DVI with HDCP and Dual Link DVI in and out) that met the need to display a range of content. Robles continued by describing the video wall's "powerful scaling capability that would give us great flexibility in moving images and content around on the video wall and changing image sizes and the visual relationship of each to others to create interest."

Another important feature of the Clarity Matrix is its use of Planar's EasyAxis™ Mounting System. This is a six-axis alignment system that ensures precise positioning of each Clarity Matrix LCD panel and guarantees consistency in the very small (5.5 mm) tiled bezel width. An added advantage of this system is that it allows heat-generating components (e.g., controllers and power supplies) to be located away from the wall which minimizes heat-related failures and contributes to a life cycle that well exceeds that of competitive LCD video walls on the market.

"For us, the benefits are that the viewer is presented with a virtually seamless canvas that accentuates the content. And, we have a display solution that will perform for a very long period of time and will well support the many new opportunities we envision for it," Robles says.