As people walk by the colorful media installation inside the lobby of 44 Montgomery Street, they transform the space in real time. Acting as digital paintbrushes, people moving throughout the lobby cause the motion-activated media installation to trail a colored path across the display that matches their movement.

Bringing a Lobby to Life with a Colorful Media Installation

Prior to ESI Design’s intervention, the lobby at 44 Montgomery Street, in the heart of San Francisco’s Financial District, felt cramped and outdated. To brighten the atmosphere and reflect the energy of the creative tenants, ESI Design developed a reactive lobby experience to solidify the 43-story tower’s identity as a modern San Francisco workplace.

As visitors and employees walk past the motion-activated media display, Each person who enters triggers a corresponding color, which then moves with them across the space. The more people walk by, the more brushstrokes fill the canvas, making the lobby feel spacious and alive. The installation utilizes the horizontal orientation of the lobby and creates a bright, vibrant contrast to the largely monochrome space.

Using Motion-Activated Media in a Reactive Lobby Experience

A suite of sensors tracks people as they move through the lobby, The closer a passerby gets to the canvas, the larger the brush size gets. This variability in brushstroke size creates an unexpected mixture of heavy and light streaks. And when two people cross paths, the trails swirl around each other, creating new colors and unexpected patterns.

Two different “brush” types—a soft-edge, fluid Organic Brush and a hard-edged, sharper Geometric Brush— can be displayed on the installation’s custom ribbed surface, which is reminiscent of the fins on the tower’s façade.

The new design enhances the experience of existing tenants and will attract new business by reasserting 44 Montgomery’s identity as a San Francisco destination.

Are you interested in using a colorful media installation to create a dynamic  lobby experience?

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