Last week I was kindly invited by Rebecca to come in and give a talk to some of her colleagues at ARUP. The particular division I spoke to are focussed on building facades and so there was some interest in this old way of using wall space.
Again there were some interesting questions at the end, in particular whether I felt there could be any future for painted wall advertising. Although I don’t think it will ever return as a mainstream medium, it can be used to great effect as a dramatic, PR-able way of delivering advertising. This would seem to be one of the benefits that Colossal Media offer their clients.
There was also some discussion about modern equivalents such as ‘flexible facades‘ which allow various images and text to be displayed on buildings via technology located within the wall itself. This is presumably very expensive to install but, once in place, could allow for large scale advertising to be presented. To date it has been used in Scotland to display children’s artwork on industrial chimneys and also as a ‘text wall’ to allow people to send messages via their mobiles to a massive digital display. However, as with the increasing number of digital poster sites appearing, there are lots of ways this technology could be used for more commercial purposes.
Thank you to Rebecca and everyone at ARUP for welcoming me in.
