Nifty. But I think I'd still rather have, you know, windows.

Super pointless. It's like a slightly classy, year round Christmas lighting.

So if I am inside the building with a window behind this fascade, I get disco lighting?

@Darrone: "It's like a slightly classy, year round Christmas lighting."

From my perspective, when I'm house hunting, pre-installed Christmas lights are a major selling point.

@bosskev: But if you buy that house, do you leave it on 24/7 like the giant neighborhood doosh?

This has advertising potential.
That was a waste of a demo.
It's got pixels, it can display text and images with them.
It would have at least been nice to see a hello world sweeping across the building.

That would be pretty cool for about four months a year here in Minnesota. Kind of like a motorcycle, great for four months. I wonder what would happen when they first froze? Start falling off one by one, short out the whole building because they can't move?

That just looks stupid.

@Darrone: Umm...are you implying that there is an off switch hidden somewhere? I'll have to look into that.

@Darrone: Except I don't recall seeing only black and white Christmas lights very many places... Unless I missed the color section somewhere!!

@blindaxs: My point was its just something that calls attention to itself for no real reason. I mean, it's not aesthetically awesome, its not artistic, its not really anything. It just says "Hey, look at me, I have enough money to make my building look retarded and not care!" juuuuuust like Christmas lights in the summer.

It's DLP monitor as seen by ants!

@Dillenger69: If these panels were smaller so you could have actual feature definition on what you were displaying then maybe. Maybe a better use would be the exterior walls of say a car parking garage. They look like they'd still offer some ventilation. *shrug* Kinda neat but I'd murder someone that put those over my view of the outside world.

Why not have the tiles tilt to change color from dark to light. Dark when its cold and they need the building to absorb heat, light when its hot and they need to reflect heat. You could do this for summer/winter or even on a daily basis.

Does this remind anybody else of the Batmobile?

@bosskev: Agreed, I'd go insane if I was stuck in my six story building with nothing but neon lights and the batmobile smeared all over the windows.

I'm sure Dubai will find some use for it.

oh yes! ...that's advertising real estate, right there... tooo nice!

Comes in two fantastic colors ... grey, gray.

"You know what, Stan, if you want me to wear 37 pieces of flair, like your pretty boy over there, Brian, why don't you just make the minimum 37 pieces of flair?"

Reminds me of the scrolling display on the Flat Iron building in NYC. But not as useful.

Could this be used for energy efficiency? Flip the white side out when you want a higher reflective index (summer, midday), and the dark side out when you want to absorb more light (winter, early morning).

From the animation, it only works on the sunside of the building anyway, so that might make it marginally more useful.

Y'know, I don't really care. I don't really like talking about my
Flare.

You know what, Stan, if you want me to wear 37 pieces of flair, like your pretty boy over there, Brian, why don't you just make the minimum 37 pieces of flair?

You know, the Nazis had buildings with flare that they made the Jews build.

@shamoononon: It reminds me more of TV's "Viper"
When the car changes to "Battle Mode"

+ Watch video

I got your flair right here... [tinyurl.com]

@FreeMan: I think you mean the Times Tower ([www.nyc-architecture.com])

I've investigated PVC cells (solar panels) for buildings we build and I can tell you as of last year they don't produce enough energy to power the rotation to the sun by themselves. They would need a secondary power source to rotate themselves which is pointless. They have a horrible lifespan and barely pay themselves off -they work for leed certification/gimmicks if you're tryint to sell condos /apts but however.

looks good until it becomes a pigeon graveyard/masacre machine...all those little dead bodies

a) You could spell words out on skyscrapers.

b) looks noisy as hell.

c) "I don't like to talk about my flare, can we talk about something else"

@pharmerchris: Dubia AND Vegas.

@SeattleTed:
That's interesting about the feasibility of PVC cells.

I wonder, though, whether they could be used to act as a heatsink in the Winter and and heat deflector in the Summer (for temperate climates).... I suppose the building would then be black and white depending on the time of the year.