The night of May 15 was a big one. The cheese platters came in honor of the “Small Talks. Big Ideas.” special program created by the New York Chapter of SEGD where designers get to visit with each other in their studios to have an open, collaborative dialogue around projects and process.

Since it won SEGD’s top award, they asked us to focus the first part of our talk on the perennial favorite, the Dream Cube, our pavilion for the Shaghai Corporate Community at the the 2010 World Expo. ESI partnered with a team of world-renown architects and producers to design and build a 40,000 square foot pavilion that responded to the moment-by-moment actions of the visitors, creating millions of unique experiences. Technology & Media Designer Michael Schneider walked our guests through the process and real world challenges of designing a project of this scale and complexity in China, with an international team of collaborators based in New York, Germany, China, Australia, and Los Angeles.

Ed Purver, another of our talented Technology & Media designers, then took guests behind the scenes to an active prototype for a new dynamic media installation launching this summer at 330 Hudson, a Beacon Capital Partners corporate real estate project in lower Manhattan. ESI is enhancing the lobby with a media-rich experience that showcases the history and vibrant contemporary life of the neighborhood, along with real-time information including data visualizations of the building’s LEED sustainability systems and live weather data from around the world. The media program is self-sustaining. It samples from a variety of content pieces automatically and dynamically displays them on 77 linear feet of LEDs that wrap the building’s lobby. The prototype enables us to test new technology and material mash-ups as well as optimize media designs for the new display. You can see how the prototype got into our offices in this video:

ESI LAB: LED Test Screen Install from ESI Design on Vimeo.

Also on hand were Angela Greene, the Director of Visual Media, Emily Webster, Technology & Media designer, and Maria Rizzolo, Physical Designer. Having a discussion with peers is always invigorating and not something we designers get to do as often as we like. We send a big thank you to SEGD – we are grateful for the kind invitation they extended to host a “Small Talks. Big Ideas.” presentation and look forward to hosting again!