WCUP Building

The University of Washington's West Campus Utility Plant (WCUP) is an extension of the University’s Power Plant, located on University Way near Pacific Street. It houses a softly glowing wall in the roof,  as well as a street-facing series of 12 HD displays.

These play a series of animations interleaved with educational information about environmentally aware student organizations on the UW Campus. The WCUP building has gone on to win an Envision Gold award from the Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure (ISI).

My work on the project focused completely on animation on the large signage displays, designing and developing the content which would be looped and displayed to the street-facing exterior.

DEVELOPMENT PROCESS

I began by compiling and cataloguing early concepts and design work from multiple other designers. This information was scattered across multiple file sharing sites, hard disks, thumbdrives, and was in delightfully obtuse file formats and programs.

I iterated on several other designs as well as designing and creating new ones from scratch.  I sourced background HD video, composited greenscreen footage, motion tracked live-action footage.

During the final stages, I assisted in exporting and uploading the videos to be compliant with the BrightSign systems. Certain elements needed to be adjusted once the screens were visible in the real environment, to better integrate with the space. They are now publicly on display.