To draw prospective tenants to its new build-out on 1st Avenue South in Seattle, Starbucks sought a signature piece for the building’s lobby. That signature piece became a 52-foot-wide video wall installation that now not only engages prospects but generates revenue through contracted digital signage and advertising. Diversified designed, constructed and installed the video wall, meeting Starbucks’s requirements of being able to display multiple images from different sources while maintaining versatility, ruggedness, and ease of use.
The finished video wall is made up of four, unframed rear-projection screens with a wide-angle coating. Content is delivered by six projectors, housed in thru-wall, single-mirror, rear projection modules. The projected images are served content, seamlessly edge-blended together and synchronized by software residing on workstation computers with graphics cards–one workstation per projector, with a seventh acting as the master production computer.
To ensure that no gaps between the panels were visible, special ‘H’-channel strips were locally fabricated out of sheet-metal on which each panel could slide into place with a consistent seam and bow angle. Additionally, two smaller side panels were made from an opaque plastic material to match the look of the screen when no images are being shown; the wall appears to fill the space around it.
Audio also plays a significant role in the installation, with a sound card residing inside the master production computer. Sound is delivered to the lobby through a pair of loudspeakers on either side of the video wall. These loudspeakers incorporate digital beam-steering technology, ensuring high-quality and intelligibility of both speech and music; even in acoustically challenging spaces such as this entrance lobby of an office building.
At first sight, it may look like nothing more than a giant mural. But no mural was ever as engaging, as dynamic, or as filled with promotional potential as the video wall at 505 1st Avenue South.
