View The Whitlock Group\'s Award Winning Arch-Tech magazine 30 million dollar integrated system project.

1. ARCHI TECHW H E R E T E C H N O L O G Y M E E T S D E S I G N
®
•
JULY/AUGUST2008

2. ne thing all great communities have in common is
a great gathering place: There’s New York’s Times
Square, Boston Common, Chicago’s Daley Plaza,
and now Victory Plaza in Dallas.
ARCHI•TECHJULY/AUGUST2008VICTORYPARKSCREENS★BESTOVER$1MILLION
VICTORIOUS
Place Making
High-tech media network transforms a former Dallas brownfield
site into the city’s living room
Sixth Annual ARCHI-TECH AV Awards ★ 2008
continued
By Patricia Kirk
Victory Park Screens
BEST OVER $1 MILLION
LOCATION: Dallas, TX
AV BUDGET: $30 Million
AWARD WINNERS:
TFO Architecture
The Whitlock Group - Dallas
Vantage Technology
Consulting Group
Webinar: Aug. 6
More info: www.architechmag.
com/webinars/avawards
development in the Uptown
district of Dallas.
Victory Park Screens puts
a fresh, contemporary face
on Dallas and celebrates the
culture of its people but
more importantly represents
a shift in scale and applica-
tion of media as an effective
place making element, notes
David Gales, a consultant with
Los Angeles-based Vantage
Technology Consulting Group
and project manager.
It also demonstrates how
to successfully merge media
and advertising to create a
useful message, notes Richard
Orne, a principal at Los
Completed in 2007 by
local developer Hillwood,
Victory Plaza is a new-
comer to the league of great
gathering spots but not a
stepchild. In fact, Victory
Plaza represents a new era
in urban place making that
uses gigantic high-resolution
LED video screens with a
lively mix of digital art, film,
news, and other information
to attract visitors and keep
them there. The high-tech
$30 million Victory Park
Screens has established the
plaza as a unique amenity
for Hillwood’s new 75-acre
Victory Park master planned
O

3. Angeles-based TFO Architecture
and project designer, stressing
that design is critical to making
commercial messages acceptable
in a cultural context.
Creating the Hook
The idea to create the large-
scale, outdoor digital art gallery
at Victory Plaza grew out of the
need for a hook to establish
Victory Park as a top destina-
tion, notes Ken Reese, Hillwood
executive vice president for
Victory Park. The concept was
envisioned as a way to add
hip, sophisticated energy to the
development’s refined, contem-
porary atmosphere. Its location
in front of American Airlines
Center enhanced the opportunity
to attract sports spectators and
concert-goers.
“The concept was to essen-
tially create an ‘urban living
room’ – our own version of Times
Square for Dallas,” suggests
Richard Orne.
The project scope included a
conceptual study to analyze the
feasibility of combining media and
architecture, estimate costs and
JASONWYNN
Architect Richard Orne describes Victory as an
“urban living room” – his firm’s version of Times
Square for Dallas.
JEREMYWOODHOUSE
It was standing room only at
Victory Plaza’s first New Year’s
celebration in 2007.

4. JASONWYNN
Victory’s screens were mounted on gliders
to ensure that none of the buildings’ office
windows were permanently blocked.
ARCHI•TECHJULY/AUGUST2008

5. resources, and identify operational implications such as staff-
ing and content requirements.
Nuts and Bolts
The resulting project is arguably the world’s largest
configuration of outdoor video
displays, with 11 gigantic LED
screens, all manufactured by the
Belgium firm Barco.
Two 20- by 20-foot screens
atop the Icon Tower on the
southern end of the plaza cre-
ate a highly visible marker for
the overall Victory Park com-
munity while a 19- by 32-foot
digital portal welcomes visi-
tors at the plaza’s main Olive
Street entrance.
Eight screens move hori-
zontally along 200-foot-long
tracks on façades of the two
modern office buildings that
flank the plaza. The video
screens, four on each building,
can move separately to provide infinite configuration pos-
sibilities for showcasing digital art and animation or com-
bine to form two huge 31- by 53-foot screens for viewing
films and other information.
Combined with LED displays, the computer-operated
movement system, fabricated and programmed by Barco,
consumed one-third of the total project budget. This innova-
tive system allows video, sound, and lighting special effects
to be choreographed with screen configurations.
B&K surround-sound processors immerse spectators in
sound from clusters of custom JBL AM Series speakers, with
Crown CTs Series amplifiers equipped with PIP-USP3 process-
ing cards strategically mounted along building walls.
A Peavey Nion digital audio platform allows special
sound effects to track with screen movements. In a Target
commercial, for example, the sound of the company’s famil-
iar red ball follows the image as it bounces from screen to
screen, explains Steve Whittle, project engineer with Dallas-
based The Whitlock Group, the systems integrator.
A theatrical lighting system enhances the nighttime
experience, expanding the range of video displays across
building facades. High End Systems Hog PC programming and
playback wings allow prepro-
grammed light shows choreo-
graphed for specific programs to
be digitally stored. This system
works hand-in-hand with a DMX
repeater and Patch Bay digital
processor that samples and
analyzes image colors in real
time, then duplicates them in
colored light painted on build-
ing façades.
Concept to Reality
Bringing Victory Plaza to life
in a purposeful and aesthetically
enduring way required the heavy
lifting involved in developing a
prototype. Everything that went
into the project had to be fabri-
cated, configured or programmed, then tested and refined.
From the start, Hillwood wanted a design that integrates
the technology with the architecture so it looks like part of
the building. To accomplish this, Orne used decorative wire
mesh scrims to create a backdrop on the exterior walls of the
five-story buildings to blend tracks and other hardware with
the façade. Surprisingly, the wire mesh enhanced sound
acoustics while producing a layering effect that allows light
to reach windows blocked by screens and shades unob-
structed windows from the sun.
Mounting screens on gliders was an idea borrowed from
the video network at Las Vegas Fashion Show mall – also
designed by Orne – and ensures that none of the office win-
dows are blocked permanently.
The client also wanted the technology to be infinitely
flexible so content could be changed at a moment’s notice.
Victory Park Screens is inherently flexible but spontaneity
QUOTE FROM JUDGE
★ “What this installation is doing goes beyond just
integration between architecture; it actually gets into urban
planning and urban design, and it actually changed the character of
the space for different users during the day and in the night.”
Four 20- by 20-foot LED screens move along on
200 feet of horizontal tracks, providing infinite
possibilities for displaying digital art or animation.
ADRIENNEORILLA
ARCHI•TECHJULY/AUGUST2008VICTORYPARKSCREENS★BESTOVER$1MILLION
resources, an
Sixth Annual ARCHI-TECH AV Awards ★ 2008

6. was enhanced with integra-
tion of the audio and video
playback and control sys-
tems with WFAA-TV Channel
8’s live audio/video head-in
from an on-site studio.
Integration of the two sys-
tems provides the ability to
react instantly to activities
at American Airlines Center
such as game outcomes but
complicated the integration
process, notes Scott Creevy,
sales manager for The
Whitlock Group.
Three HDSDI-over-fiber links integrated into the sys-
tem support transmission of live feeds and broadcasts
from WFAA studios to Victory Plaza. To avoid screens
going black, the Whitlock team had to synchronize time
clocks between the two systems to ensure that transi-
tions between the screens’ content switched smoothly to
and from live WFAA broadcasts, notes Whittle. WFAA also
had to implement operational procedures to strip com-
mercial spots in Channel 8 broadcasts, he says, replacing
them with corporate branding images.
Additionally, the system is linked via fiber-optic cable
to Icon Tower, the W Hotel, and six 8-foot-tall kiosks with
playback monitors placed over a two-block area to allow
viewing from throughout the community, he says.
Other challenges unique to the Victory project included
integrating the display movement system so the building
does not sway when four video screens weighing in excess
of 15,000 pounds each are moved, says Whittle.
The system also had to be coordinated with the inde-
pendent AV system at American Airlines Center and config-
ured to ensure sound does
not migrate beyond the
Victory Park community and
disturb neighbors.
Heart of the Matter
“Once you have a
kinetic delivery system like
this, it begs the question:
What is the message and
how can it be made useful
to the environment and
culture? The answer is: ‘The
medium is the message,’”
says Orne, quoting Canadian philosopher and communica-
tions visionary Herbert Marshall McLuhan.
The heart and soul of the project is its content, which
must be intelligent, compelling, and replenished with fresh
material regularly, he notes, stressing the need for archi-
tects to get involved in shaping the message and establish-
ing a sustainable source of new content.
Adds Gales, “When a building talks, it takes on a differ-
ent dimension than just a building, becoming a communica-
tion tool that needs a purpose.”
The resulting public space created by Victory Park
Screens interacts with users in a meaningful, intelli-
gent way, defining Victory Park’s social fabric in a hip,
urban context.
While users cannot possibly appreciate the effort that
went into creating Victory Plaza, just visiting is enough to
make the day for its creators. “The happy part: It’s still fun
to go down there and see it all work,” says Creevy. •
Patricia Kirk (captainkirk@earthlink.net) is a freelance
writer based in Austin, TX.
A 19- by 32-foot digital portal welcomes visitors entering
Victory Plaza from Olive Street.
RANDYBYRD
ARCHI•TECHJULY/AUGUST2008
Reprinted with permission from Archi-Tech, July/August 2008. © On the web at www.architechmag.com.
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