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NanoLumens lights up CenturyLink R&D center with NanoWrap

Pillars in the building's three-story atrium lobby sport a custom NanoWrap solution that plays full-motion video bright enough to withstand the ambient light of midday.

September 4, 2015

In March, CenturyLink, a communications, hosting, cloud and IT services company, cut the ribbon on its new "Technology Center of Excellence." The lobby of the 300,000-square-foot, LEED certification-pending building features NanoWrap visualization solutions manufactured by NanoLumens.

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Three columns in the building's three-story atrium lobby are wrapped with NanoLumens' 5MM NanoWrap displays in a 42-inch-diameter circular panel that covers 12 feet of vertical surface on each column.

NanoLumens LED panels, made up of thousands of the company's patented Nixels modules, present a continuous stream of full-motion video visible throughout the entire lobby from any angle.

Each column can show different video content or all three can play synchronously, with content fed over IPTV via fiber from a cloud-based Cisco-AppSpace content delivery system.

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The NanoWraps are attached to the columns by a unique circular mounting system with a custom metal frame into which the panels are fitted.

"The space- and energy-efficient NanoWrap solution offers quiet, low energy-consuming cylindrical visualization wherever a customer would like to place it," said Karen Robinson, NanoLumens executive vice president of business development.

"Whether that's hanging overhead, in a fixed position on its own, or around the columns of a building, NanoWrap solutions are made to equip customers like CenturyLink with the perfect visualization solution that's just right for them — no matter what size, shape, or curvature is needed."

The lobby design also incorporates 37,000 square feet of View Dynamic Glass that uses nanotechnology and preprogrammed intelligence to tint automatically in response to outside conditions and user preferences, eliminating the need for blinds or shades.

Even so, the lobby is very bright, but NanoLumens technology, which can be adjusted as ambient light levels change throughout the day, ensures that video will remain clearly and crisply visible at any time, under any conditions.

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Addison, Texas-based consulting firm Idibri designed the installation. Ben Cating, senior consultant and VP at Idibri, said that CenturyLink wanted the lobby of its R&D facility to reflect the company's state-of-the-art mindset:

"We looked at a lot of possibilities, and video would keep the columns as an integral part of the aesthetic design, but attaching conventional flat displays to them would have ruined the flow they create visually," Cating said.

"Only the flexibility of the NanoWraps, which we could literally wrap around the columns, offered us the solution that we needed. NanoWraps were the only way we could address this particular form factor. The result is striking to look at."