KROST construction company builds skyscrapers, business centers, sports facilities, schools, kindergartens and residential districts. One of the company’s most prominent projects is the grandiose Wellton Towers cluster in Moscow, three tall skyscrapers located in a modern and carefully designed district.
Dynamic façades for the skyscrapers that change their appearance depending on the speed and angle of view were developed at the studio. Moreover, an innovative finishing principle that make static façades visually interactive was created.
What does “visually interactive façades” mean? And why are they a huge innovation in architecture?
Modern cities strive for interactivity: mediafaçades are installed on buildings, images are projected and light shows conducted. But at the same time, there are still no laconic and unobtrusive solutions that would allow the viewer to truly participate in a dialog with architecture.
We call visually interactive façades that look differently depending on the behavior of the viewer: the façades appear as a static pattern of panels if you are standing still in front of a skyscraper, but driving by in a car will make them come to life.
The illusion is based on the reflection of the sky in specially installed metal plates covered with protruding concrete ribs. From one angle, the plates reflect the sky, from another they don’t and instead appear black. The ascending gradient bands move towards the descending ones, amplifying the optical illusion.
Panels
The ribbed veneer panels made of glass fiber reinforced concrete with metal inserts act as pixels forming the image on the façade. Each panel is light and strong enough to withstand tremendous wind loads affecting high-rise buildings.
The metal inserts reflect the sky only when viewed from a certain angle that depends on the rotation of the ribs.
A single set of panels can be used to construct various patterns, textures and animations.
Buildings decorated this way look beautiful in any weather: on cloudy days they look uniform while on clear days a pleasant ripple of the clouds goes over the façades. Thanks to its simplicity, the principle can be used on any buildings, from skyscrapers to apartment buildings and helps create various effects and animations that can’t be achieved any other way.
Dynamic façades fully meet our vision of the way modern homes should look. Moreover, they are part of the vision of modern architecture at Art. Lebedev Studio.
