Lobby Inspiration: 11th & Idaho’s Video Wall

11th & Idaho
Downtown Boise, Idaho

11th and ID

This is a sum­ma­ry of the case study pro­vid­ed by Sharp NEC. You can read the full case study here.

The Challenge

Rafanel­li and Nahas, the own­ers of the new com­mer­cial office build­ing at 11th & Ida­ho in down­town Boise, ID, had a vision in mind when design­ing the lob­by. They knew they want­ed some­thing that would dif­fer­en­ti­ate their lob­by and make their space stand out in the down­town area. After con­sid­er­ing a vari­ety of options, they land­ed on a show­stop­per to com­plete the 5,000 square-foot lob­by – a video wall to be used as a revolv­ing art installation.

Solution

NEC LED-FE015i2 1.5mm Indoor dvLED Display.

Direct View LED Wall in Lobby

Result

Locat­ed direct­ly adja­cent to Boise’s newest city park, 11th & Ida­ho fea­tures incred­i­ble views from its roof-top deck all the way down to its dra­mat­ic 18-foot high win­dows in the lob­by. One of the key fea­tures of the building’s lob­by is the expan­sive 8 feet x 15 feet Direct View LED (dvLED) wall from Sharp NEC Dis­play Solu­tions that sets it apart from any oth­er space. The lob­by wel­comes ten­ants and vis­i­tors by show­cas­ing the nat­ur­al beau­ty of the state with a gor­geous, vibrant pub­lic art dis­play fea­tur­ing majes­tic nature scenes from around Ida­ho by local video artists.

Direct View LED Wall in Lobby

Building the Building

Pri­or to con­struc­tion, Rafanel­li and Nahas searched to find an archi­tect that would pro­vide a thought­ful, ele­gant design for its down­town Boise com­mer­cial office build­ing to bring an urban feel like what one would find in San Fran­cis­co or Lon­don. The award-win­ning team at Perkins + Will deliv­ered a design to attract and sup­port the next gen­er­a­tion of pro­fes­sion­als in down­town Boise.

The build­ing fea­tures dra­mat­ic 18-foot high ceil­ings in the lob­by and floor to ceil­ing win­dows look­ing out onto 11th St and the sprawl­ing down­town cityscape, P+W designed the space to fea­ture an engag­ing, high­ly impact­ful video wall. The lead­ers at Rafanel­li and Nahas looked to Neurilink, a lead­ing North­west-based audio visu­al inte­gra­tor, to bring their tech­nol­o­gy vision to real­i­ty. After review­ing a num­ber of tech­nol­o­gy options, Rafanel­li and Nahas decid­ed on an expan­sive 8 ft. x 15 ft. dvLED video wall from Sharp NEC Dis­play Solutions.

State of the ART

The goal of the video wall was to serve as more than a sim­ple screen show­ing the news through­out the day. Rafanel­li and Nahas want­ed this daz­zling dis­play to be awe-inspir­ing for vis­i­tors to the build­ing and those walk­ing on the busy side­walk down­town. The video wall serves as bridge between the clean lines and ele­gant design of the build­ing and the rugged, pic­turesque beau­ty that defines Ida­ho. Rafanel­li and Nahas com­mis­sioned video artists to film high con­trast, high impact nature scenes all around the state to make view­ers feel as if they are stand­ing among moun­tain peaks, walk­ing through a grove of aspens, or wad­ing through a shal­low stream.

“This wall is more than a video dis­play, it is a work of art,” said Scott Schoen­herr, Part­ner at Rafanel­li and Nahas Man­age­ment Cor­po­ra­tion. “Not only has this tech­nol­o­gy from Sharp/ NEC met our needs in terms of size, image clar­i­ty, hard­ware qual­i­ty and ener­gy usage, it has also helped us meet our vision for what is pos­si­ble and to stand apart from oth­er build­ings in the region.”