Responses by Belle & Wissell, Co.
Background: The Tribute Wall is an interactive media experience at the heart of the new Bill & Melinda Gates Center for Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington, Seattle. The installation’s primary intent is to invite and inspire students to not only learn about the Pacific Northwest’s rich computing history, but also to see themselves as the next great innovators.
Reasoning: Belle & Wissell designed and developed the media experience in close collaboration with LMN Architects and the Paul G. Allen School for Computer Science & Engineering. The wall of displays needed to gracefully integrate with the building as an artful architectural element, and come to life with interactive storytelling as visitors approach the massive touch surface.
The wall also responds to visitor presence through color shifts as students approach. Students are further invited to interact with touch via “story hooks”: invitations to dig deeper into a set of over 100 stories. The interactive Story Mode profiles the long history of tech innovation in the Pacific Northwest—the University of Washington’s role in computing history, invention and entrepreneurship in the region, and how diversity in the field has improved at the Allen School and in the industry.
Challenges: The client team requested that this media experience be both an ambient media art installation and simultaneously function as a multi-user content delivery system. When students begin to touch the massive wall, a curtain of content opens to reveal digestible, media-rich stories within.
Favorite details: Our design and technology team members worked hand-in-hand to develop an Abstract Canvas Mode that incorporated and addressed the building’s material selections, color palettes and stylizations. Careful art direction was married with programmatic movement, using generative algorithms, to create this continuous movement and color shifts.
Visual influences: As the Tribute Wall represents the progression and continuum of computing history in the Pacific Northwest, we wanted the design system to pay homage to visual references—such as the early Internet’s stepped 216 color palette—while also referencing the lighting effects and irregular shapes of the physical materials that the wall sits within.
Anything new: We learned that design restraint is critical when designing a responsive media experience of this scale. The movement and interactions need to be truly nuanced so that the experience maintains its intended personality in a number of different scenarios. Regardless of the scenario, The Tribute Wall feels like an intentional part of the building, an extension of the architecture and a reflection of the progression of achievements produced by the Allen School.
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