Plexiglas, wood, steel, fluorescent tubes,
and electronics
Panel: 31 1/2 x 43 1/2
x 11 3/4" (80 x 110.5 x 29.8 cm)
BIX is a permanent light-and-media
installation for Kunsthaus Graz, Austria,
the biomorphic art museum designed
by Peter Cook and Colin Fournier,
which opened in 2003. BIX consists
of a Plexiglas facade with 930 fluorescent
tubes on the building’s eastern side.
The facade thus functions as an oversize,
undulating urban screen, with each
light ring adjustable for brightness
and functioning as a pixel in a dynamic,
low-resolution art gallery, as if the
building were tattooed with larger-than-life
images, text, and film sequences.
The designers want BIX to act as “an
architectural ‘enabler’ enhancing the
building’s communicative possibilities”
as well as its range and identity. Through
manageable and inexpensive technology,
this modular system embodies a vision
of architecture as a changing, moving,
and performing medium and demonstrates
an accessible, eco-conscious
(for its era) integration of media surfaces
in urban landscapes. A BIX panel is in
the collection of The Museum of Modern
Art.
