THE WORLD’S CITIES WILL GROW GREEN

As night falls in October 2011, passers-by on Rådhuspladsen in Copenhagen could experience the project “The World’s Cities Will Grow Green…If We Want Them To” projected onto the 1500 square meter facade of the city hall. Themes like Energy, Water, Waste and Transportation - all related to the simultaneous Green Growth Leaders conferences - were brought alive as a combination of statements and dynamic graphics in interplay with the architecture. The idea was to communicate the most dominant topics from the on-going Green Growth Leaders debate in an experience-oriented way, and in eye-height with citizens and tourist crossing the square. The four themes created a total loop of eleven minutes of black and white graphics: 3D geometries appear around the windows frames on the facade and turn into a large-scale bar charge that again transform into a skyline with growing trees. Rolling texts, the height of a person, cross the facade and large icons are brought alive together with digital leaves that look as if they are carried away by the actual wind on the square.

The content was produced specifically in relation to the architecture and some sequences were furthermore rendered from a perspective referring to a central position on the town square. Four projectors, installed in a tower, were stacked and stitched to create a high-resolution projection area that covered the complete facade. The projection was both calibrated through hardware and software to make sure that the digital space of the content and the physical space of the facade matched.

The project is created by Danish Architecture Centre and Kollision in collaboration with Green Growth Leaders and was exhibited from the 10th to the 23rd of October 2011. The project was supported by Realdania and the Municipality of Copenhagen.