Featured Project: ProDisplay Films Help Turn 25-Story Hotel into a Digital Canvas

UK-based ProDisplay, a manufacturer of rear- and front-projection screens, LED and LCD digital signage displays and other related technology, announces a recent installation that made quite an impression at a European trade show geared toward the Pro A/V market.

The Integrated Systems Europe 2019 show is held in Amsterdam each year, drawing those in the A/V industry from all over the world.

According to ProDisplay’s announcement, projection mapping has grown increasingly popular in the A/V world as a way to deliver a memorable message, and ISE wanted to take the opportunity to enlist its partners to demonstrate the amazing potential of this type of visual display.

It was decided that the unusually-shaped nhow Amsterdam RAI hotel, which is adjacent to the location of ISE, would provide an exciting virtual canvas for the projection mapping. The 25-story hotel has 650 rooms and is perhaps most known for its unusual design.

ISE brought in the Wisconsin-based LANG group to oversee the project. Panasonic‘s PT-RZ31K projectors were brought in to project the images onto the hotel. 3D mapping specialists Tenfeet worked in partnership with media server specialists Green Hippo, based in The Netherlands and Cincinatti, respectively, to deliver the content, and ProDisplay developed, supplied and installed the projection film required to make the project a success.

According to ProDisplay, its projection film is a removable, dry application, self-adhesive film that enabled the windows on the hotel to receive and display the content being projected onto them by the Panasonic projectors. The company says film was necessary to combat the glare and lack of image reproduction that projecting onto standard glass would have resulted in. Further, a traditional projection film would have needed to be installed on the outside of the building, and given the unusual shape of the building-plus the fact that nearly 400 windows needed to be covered-would have made installation extremely difficult.

So, ProDisplay’s Projection Mapping Film was installed on the interior of the 392 windows and deliver the results that ISE had been hoping for. An estimated 80,000 people attended the show and viewed the images.

“For the duration of the exhibition, attendees were treated to a daily showcase of projection mapping imagery that made use of the building’s unique profile,” says Mike Blackman, founder of ISE. “This was interwoven with constantly updated exhibition highlights and previews, projected onto two stories of the new hotel. It literally stopped the traffic!”