The parking garage is a routinely overlooked architectural typology: a necessary structure, but rarely one that garners much attention. Cook Children’s Health Care System — a Forth Worth, Texas, pediatric hospital listed by U.S. News and World Report as one of the nation’s best — thought differently, tapping the potential of the ancillary piece of architecture to make it as expressive and engaging as any other type of building. To accommodate a rapidly growing staff as the hospital expanded, Cook added a seven-level, employees-only parking garage, designed by Dallas-based HKS, Inc., in 2013. The run-of-the-mill garage served its purpose of adding hundreds of new parking spaces, but the hospital took the initiative to create a more engaging façade and installed an LED screen along the height of the structure that now plays regularly changing artwork and creative content selected by the Cook Children’s staff.
The parking garage at Cook Children’s Health Care System
All Mediamesh attachments are custom-created for maximum strength and safety by the in-house design team. This detail shows the Cook Hospital’s “woven-in round bar” system: a round bar studded with eyebolts was woven into each panel at the top and the bottom.
This enhanced façade was made possible by metal fabric company GKD’s Mediamesh, the stainless-steel textile interwoven with LEDs that also comprises the grand 3,400-square-foot marquee curving over the façade of the Miami Heat’s American Airlines Arena, which welcomes approximately 1.3 million guests per year. Using linear tubes filled with LED nodes, Mediamesh displays high-resolution, large-scale, dynamic digital imagery in the same fashion as a computer monitor. Thanks to its low energy consumption, transparence to light and wind, in-house design consultation team, and weather-resistant qualities, it’s ideal for enlivening architectural surfaces, from sports venues to parking garages.
The Miami Heat’s American Airlines Arena on Biscayne Boulevard
GKD was founded nearly a century ago by German engineers who had developed a state-of-the-art weaving mill for metal fabrics, continuing to evolve today with new breakthroughs in technology. It is the 30-foot-tall Mediamesh screen on the surface of another parking garage — the Chickasaw Nation’s WinStar World Casino in Thackerville, Okla. — that represents GKD’s cutting edge. The 2012 project, designed to engage with the drivers passing along the nearby interstate, utilized a new configuration of LEDs, six clusters rather than the typical five. The addition of this LED resulted in a brighter output level yet less energy use, meaning both an extended life of the installation as well as an extended visibility from highway I-35.
The 30-foot-tall Mediamesh screen at the Chickasaw Nation’s WinStar World Casino
Mediamesh is also as effective in the artistic realm as it is in commercial — Cook Children’s, in fact, uses the product solely for creative content and never as signage. Elsewhere, artist Jennifer Steinkamp also used GKD Mediamesh as the canvas of her 2013 “Murmuration,” the vibrant digital installation that animates the entrance of Long Beach’s Governor George Deukmejian Courthouse.
Artist Jennifer Steinkamp’s 2013 “Murmuration”
Whether it’s the canvas for a work of art or a clever commercial solution, Mediamesh is a versatile system that transforms an architectural surface into an engaging, live-action canvas. GKD will be presenting its product this year at the AIA National Convention, set to take place in Atlanta from May 14–16, at booth #2559.