May 20, 2011

At the Digital Canvases Event, hosted by Planar Systems on April 14th at the Savant Experience Center in New York City, leading architects and designers loaned their considerable talent to put video displays through their paces and to show how the Clarity Matrix and other products from Planar are becoming important architectural tools.

The thin-profile mounting system (less than 3.6") of the Clarity Matrix delivers the world's only ADA-compliant LCD video wall and the image-to-image gap (which is as small as 5.7mm) delivers stunning imagery creating a digital canvas for the design community to discover and use.

"We responded with enthusiasm to the conceptual challenge of working within this digital video medium of the Planar Clarity Matrix," said Gisue Hariri, a partner at Hariri & Hariri-Architecture, a leading firm in New York. "We have found it an ideal tool for illuminating ideas as they map to global design concepts."

Hariri was one of the many designers who showcased their work during the Digital Canvases Event. Hariri & Hariri-Architecture featured designs that weave together nature and technology as they manifest in the firm's newest mixed-use project in Salzburg, Austria. Other architects and designers present at the event included:

• The Bjarke Ingels Group, an innovative architectural firm headquartered in Denmark, who featured a flyover video of his project with Durst Fetner Residential on West 57th Street in New York.
• Joel Sanders Architect who featured his custom executive hotel concept with a video recently hailed as visionary by the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum at The Smithsonian.
• Studio Dror who exhibited custom video of how its new global building truss 'QuaDror' was conceived and is being implemented in projects on several continents.
• VanDam Information Architects who debuted for the very first time its 'MApp' for New York City, a 4D experiential new iApp.

Click Here to view photos from the event.

The exhibit ‘Berlin Happens' on May 14 at the Relative Space showroom in New York City featured 10 designers’ individual custom creations and showcased the Clarity Matrix LCD Video Wall, displaying the creative work of award-winning German architect, Juergen Mayer H, recipient of the Audi Urban Future Award 2010, and Relative Space principal Tyler Greenberg.

On June 17, the exhibit will move to the Toronto showroom of Relative Space & Floorworks.

View videos of the Clarity Matrix from the Berlin Happens Exhibit in New York City:

Planar Clarity Matrix at Berlin Happens: An Exhibition & Product Launch

Clarity Matrix Video Wall at Berlin Happens Event in New York, NY

I am a fan of acapella and was a regular watcher of NBC’s The Sing Off the past two seasons.  My favorite group this past year (well, once Oregon’s own On The Rocks was eliminated) was Committed.  See what they did with Al Green’s “Let Stay Together” or Maroon 5’s “This Love” and tell me that they didn’t deserve to win.

Anyhow, I love the sound and precision of harmony.  Everyone singing, but not everyone singing the same note.  Everyone’s unique talents (and range) featured and celebrated.  Everyone doing their part.  The ultimate in cooperation.

Being part of a great team is like that.  At Planar, we have assembled a wonderful team of professionals that have the expertise and energy to solve customer challenges and deliver excellent products.  And our team is expanding.  We are hiring for some new product managers, marketing and sales staff, and more.  Check out www.planarsystems.com/careers to see the available positions.  Apply or spread the word!  Join your voices with ours and see what we can accomplish together!

Jennifer B. Davis is all about technology innovation and is a customer advocate, business executive, mom, and loves her job as Planar's VP of marketing.  She often writes about the intersection of art, design, and display technology.

By: Jennifer Davis - Jennifer B. Davis is all about technology innovation and is a customer advocate, business executive, mom, and loves her job as Planar's VP of marketing.  She often writes about the intersection of art, design, and display technology.

Innovation is unpredictable.  Dror Benshetrit’s QuaDror architecture which was first designed to make a table-top chandelier for Swarovski has been extended to create a strong and sustainable way to fashion emergency shelters for disaster relief.

As we have seen some of the incredible things that people are doing with Clarity Matrix, I am excited to see how far the technology can go.  Check out some case studies and installation profiles at www.PlanarDigitalSignage.com.

By Jennifer Davis

I had the privilege of participating in StudioDror’s launch of their new design geometry, QuaDror. It was held at the New Museum in Manhattan and an overview video was featured on the Planar ep55 flat panel, which was part of the display. At a press conference hosted by Linda Tischler from Fast Company and Kimberly Brooks from Huffington Post, Dror Benshetrit spoke about his inspiration.

He said that at the launch in South Africa the week before, he met a teacher who encouraged students to first love, then do, then create, and then share.

It seems to me that this is the formula for innovation. You have to first start with empathy and love for the people who you are working with or for. Often it starts as a problem that needs to be solved. But in order to understand the problem, you have to understand WHY it is a problem and really care enough about the problem to want to solve it.

Only then can work be done. The work of doing, experimenting, discussing, debating, creating, and designing can be highly individual or collaborative, but once it is done the innovation must be shared. It is the final step in the formula. Only then can it solve problems and inspire others.

The Clarity™ Matrix is an example of this type of innovation. After pioneering rear-projection video walls, we understood the challenges of designing for the depth of creating a large and impressive digital display. Sometimes that depth can be easily accommodated, in a control room setting for instance, but in digital signage and architectural implementations, designers and AV installers needed something that was closer to the light box that they were familiar with.

It is this empathy for the customer that led us to build the world’s thinnest LCD video wall system, with a total depth, including the mount, measuring less than 3.6”. It is the only video wall that meets the stringent Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requirements.

Our optional Extended Ruggedness and Optics™ (ERO™) option derives from our understanding of the toll that displays take when installed in public environments, especially touch-enabled interactive displays that are growing in popularity.

Of course the product also has the modular flexibility to make it a perfect fit for a variety of design applications from corporate lobbies to hospitality, from higher education student centers to retail merchandising applications that are changing the experience for consumers and the brands they love.

And we continue this process of innovation with hopes of delivering useful tools that will be a part of your designs and solutions.