221 Main Street

A continuous ribbon of imagery and light connects the interior of the building at 221 Main St, San Francisco with the street outside.

A 125 feet long media surface rises up the rear wall of the lobby, continues onto the ceiling and then flows all the way out until it folds up onto the front facade. We used three different resolutions of LED technology for the three different surfaces, and designed media that would resolve into one fluid, continuous image.  Acid-etched diffusion glass placed at specifically varied distances from the different LED arrays resolves the different image surfaces.

I led the design team from ESI Design who conceived and designed the project.

1 Cal Plaza

An illuminated surface that extends back and folds down the wall… changing color in real-time along with the position of the sun in the sky.  A suite of digital photo galleries that each feature the curated work of Instagram’s most stylish California talent.  An ultra high resolution print sliced onto the glass fins of the curtain wall, a composite print of the view from the top of this skyscraper – one timescape image that starts at sunrise and finishes after dark.

I led the team from ESI Design that conceived and designed these interventions.

180 N LaSalle St

In the neoclassical lobby of a Chicago office building, ESI Design created a media experience that amplifies the architecture. Lively projections appear on the upper wall surround, inviting tenants and visitors into a new relationship with the space. The templates visualize sets of live data such as weather measurements, local Instagrams and current news trends, as well as pre-produced media such as birds in trees and local scenes of L trains and Wrigley Field.

ESI delivered an advanced system of 13 synchronized HD projectors (hidden in a new lighting soffit) to create the seamless and highly visible canvas, mapped precisely to the defining gestural edges of the upper walls. The projections command the attention and delight of those inside and out.

I led the design of all the real-time, software generated media content.

177 Huntington Ave

A 100 feet wide light wall that responds dynamically to temperature and wind data, and is permanently integrated into the lobby of a landmark I M Pei building in Boston, for Beacon Capital Partners.

Custom LED fixtures, designed by the ESI Design team and hidden within brushed steel housing, shine backwards onto the lobby wall, illuminating the concrete surface of the building itself, and creating shifting, ambient patterns of light that play across the entire length of the space.

In the elevator bay, a highly customized LED array provides a more informational counterpoint to the ambient light wall.  Eleven high-resolution, 22 feet tall by 6 inch wide LED strips extend from the floor up to the full height of the ceiling. Working together as one single dispersed display, these narrow bands of media show data visualizations and local information.

DC Commission on the Arts

The Washington DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities approached Obscura Digital to design and produce a custom, interactive experience to allow the public to browse and explore their portfolio of site-specific public art projects.

In my role as Creative Director for Obscura, I conceived and outlined the design for the project, and then led the team through the process of realizing it.

Wayne Wheeler’s Amendment Machine

I worked with Moey Inc to conceive and design a feature of the American Spirits exhibition at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. The goal was to create a ‘machine’ that would tell the story of how Wayne Wheeler’s strategic actions helped bring about the Prohibition era in the USA. The look and feel of the machine was inspired by funfair or boardwalk attractions of the time.

I concepted each part of the exhibit and created a detailed animation to outline the design, after which I reviewed and approved the production process.