Bloomberg, Tokyo Interactive Communication Experience

Source from a-metter
u shall visit it sometimes.

Bloomberg showroom

Since last Fall, Tokyo, which - if at all - becomes a city only when the nightly neon orgy starts, has been enriched by a new screen show. This is not a house-high large-format video screen bolted onto a railway station forecourt; it is a piece of straightforward interior architecture just under seventy square meters small.
Bloomberg, the international information agency, has created a small but fascinating showroom for its Tokyo business branch: "Bloomberg ICE". The name is its official title and stands for "interactive communicative experience". The result is a public, electronic-cum-architectural playground, a media folly as it were.

Architects: Klein Dytham architecture
Client: Bloomberg
Completion date: October 2002
Location: 2-4-1 Marunouchi, Chiyoda-Ku, Tokyo

Smart Space
Instead of impressing with size, Bloomberg ICE strikes the eye due to its original conception, which is several dimensions more intelligent than the light on/light off game in Tokyo, namely the monotonous and uninterrupted rows of flickering lights composing the illuminated advertisements that are ubiquitous in the mega-city. At Bloomberg, one is confronted with a space that reacts in real time - "smart space" as it is called today in the new language of architecture. What is means is a constructed object that is sensitive, continually processes information and engages in a form of dialog. Beneath the surfaces, processors are at work which process and convert the input received from a large number of electronic sensors.

The showroom is aware, it can feel and think, and it adapts itself to its users and visitors in a variety of ways. The latter serve as "agents" whereby the space observes them and continually computes its appearance in accordance with their behavior. The overall concept is based to an equal extent on complex high technology, an unusual design concept and an ambitious, micro-urbanistic, overall general strategy.

Indoor City
The Bloomberg showroom is located in Marunouchi, the heart of Tokyo's banking and business district - almost exactly between the main railway station and the emperor's palace. Until recently, there were only unimaginative office buildings and corporate architecture here, from the nineteen-sixties and seventies: not much glass but a lot of natural stone cladding. The drabness could not have been greater and was, in the end, an eyesore in the city landscape.
An especially aggressive approach was adopted for the "Marunouchi Building", the central high-rise office building facing Tokyo station. Within the framework of a large-scale conversion plan, the mono-functional office tower has, in the last few years, been completely redone to create an "indoor city". Around 140 shops now attract people into the building - exclusive restaurants, designer shops, cafés and bars are spread over the various levels. Information counters, lobbies and lounges on the lower floors channel the visitors towards the respective company offices on the upper floors. World-renowned artists have transformed the interiors. The atmosphere is one of vital urbanism with an enormous number of visitors flocking to see the new sensation.

The Bloomberg information agency, which has its offices in the Marunouchi Building, has now installed their showroom on the ground floor. A better location is simply inconceivable - the showroom is on display every day to a public of just under ten thousand passers-by. Apart from its marketing character, the "Bloomberg ICE" exists as a component of a comprehensively planned revitalization project, as a calculated metropolitan attraction, and, due to the way in which it is embedded in the Marunouchi Building, is an excellent example of how out-dated "stupid" office architecture can be upgraded with new "smart" components.

Bloomberg / Information
For Bloomberg, the content-related approach of the showroom matches the company's character. Bloomberg trades in data. Especially in the financial sector, the company "harvests" information world-wide in order to interpret it and translate it into comprehensible and attractive formats. The transition from the information society to the knowledge society makes the processing of abstract information into "real" knowledge a topic of utmost relevance. Bloomberg's success confirms the growing demand. The task of the showroom should therefore be to portray the work of the data traders to the public - in a way which is entertaining and which most people can understand.

For those people who do not earn (or lose) their money by trading shares, information and news regarding the world of finance are uninteresting and dry as dust: endless rows of ticking numbers, boring statistics, share prices and prognoses. In order to deal with the problem of unattractive and unappetizing data, the Tokyo office of Klein Dytham architecture (Astrid Klein, Mark Dytham) was engaged to do something about it. Previous projects of the duo were a forest made of chrome and stainless-steel trees in front of the "LaForet" chain of shops in Tokyo's fashion district, Omotesando, and the self-excusing building-site fence called "Sumimasen" (Jap. "Sorry!") that obstructed movement in the street for a short while. Working with the interface artist, Toshio Iwai, on behalf of Bloomberg, Klein Dytham have developed a kind of media architecture that takes the magic out of all computer technology and data hocus pocus.

Physical experience of information
The basic idea underlying the project is simple: the aesthetic and playful use of information. The intention is to translate stock-exchange data into formats that anyone can handle without any difficulty. Here, direct experience is intended to play a major role - information processing that can be experienced physically. In a country where toilets are computerized right up to the seat, where technology has no particular aura and grandmother is not afraid of automatic computer screens, such a concept can work.

For this idea, Klein Dytham and Toshio Iwai found a captivating metaphor: a greenish-white icicle ("ICE"), which is suspended freely from the ceiling in the middle of the showroom and acts as a data collector. The information whirring about in the (data) space condensates on the icicle, is compressed and finally ends up in a kind of "data showcase" at eye level. The swinging icicle, which swings overhead like a baldachin, turns out to be an object that can be experienced and manipulated: a room-sized glass display unit (5.0m x 3.5m), that provides some surprises when touched.

Techno Folly
In stand-by mode, the icicle initially appears to be a normal data ticker. Without interruption, columns of numbers march over the surface. Depending on the current share prices, they climb upwards and expand on the LED display or they gradually shrink and disappear from sight altogether. Everyone can understand this: the ups and downs of Wall Street, yet another large investor bites the dust.

The real fun begins when the visitor approaches the glass wall. Infrared sensors underneath the surface detect the presence of the visitor and ask him to participate. "Touch here!" commands the wall but it also reacts without anyone directly touching it. The sensors are activated when the visitor comes within a distance of half a meter. The columns of numbers begin to flutter and fluctuate; a menu appears and offers various games - electronic volleyball, a wave generator or a digital harp, for example. The icicle can be used to play music synesthetically in that the sounds played are replicated on it in the form of brightly lit, colorful tree branches.

Movement converted
The sensors register the visitor's touch and movements of the body and convert them into optical and acoustic signals. By means of graphics programs and sound synthesizers, the inputs are projected back immediately. The visitor casts an electronic shadow on the wall with the help of LEDs and loudspeakers. Active "cooperation" is demanded for this. The room gets everything moving - the visitors hop, dance, waddle and wave their arms and legs about. Everyone wants to test the reactions of this unusual phenomenon and the architecture supports and promotes what takes place. All age groups are spellbound by the "icicle"; everyone "talks" to it for a considerable length of time.

If people become tired, there is a row of massage chairs in front of the glass box which complement the physical experience of information in an amusing but also meaningful manner. From here, it is possible to observe the large screen at a distance or you can also use the attached mini-displays, which also pour out a constant stream of share-price information. Passers-by who come in for forty winks or to take a quick look at how their share account is doing are first thoroughly massaged. No-one threatens do doze off and information become tangible in the literal sense of the word.

Interface
The experiential and entertainment value of the Bloomberg ICE is astonishing. Architecture becomes a toy. This is, of course, nothing new - follies, as architectural toys, have existed for several centuries in pleasure gardens and public parks. In one sense, the electronic folly of KDA, however, is a real innovation: the integration and "use" of the physical body is exemplary. Bloomberg ICE works with bodies - not the abstract geometric bodies that architecture has always used, but concrete, human physiology. Heat radiation, muscle movement and haptic, direct touch are the only things that actually activate this space.

The immediate encounter of data and architecture/human corporeality indicates the direction in which the personalization of space and information is likely to develop in future. The attentive doorway, the speaking sofa, the "mind-reading" kitchen are no longer utopian ideas but will soon be goods on offer in an architectural catalog. Spaces like the Bloomberg ICE demonstrate how smart spaces operate, how highly computerized environments necessarily create direct interfaces between people and architecture and how our attitude to the way in which we regard spaces will change. If all this were to happen in such an entertaining manner as with the Bloomberg ICE, there would be a lasting reason for pleasure.