The Globe — AT&T Discovery District, Austin (Gensler, 2020)

Finalist – Corporate Project of the Year, AV Magazine, AV Awards, 2022
Finalist – Urban Land Institute, ULI Americas Awards for Excellence, 2022
Built Project Award Winner – Greater Dallas Planning Council, Urban Design Awards, 2021
Silver Winner – Interior Design or Commercial Category, International Design Awards, 2020
Winner – Rehab or Reuse Category, Dallas Business Journal, Best Real Estate Deals, 2019

Partners: Electrosonic, FLOAT4, Moment Factory

For Gensler DXD’s work on the AT&T discovery district in Downtown Dallas, TX, I concepted and prototyped physical X digital interactions for The Globe, a Gensler-designed audio-reactive people-responsive sculptural centerpiece on a rotating turntable that’s enabled with LED, LiDAR, and spatial audio driven by TouchDesigner and Ableton Live. For these studies, I sent OSC data from Ableton (Max for Live) and Unreal Engine to TouchDesigner, generated the graphics in TouchDesigner, and sent them to Unreal Engine over Spout. As a result, the visualization ran in real time, allowing for design changes and exploration on the fly from both our team and the client.

All of the clips of my prototype below showcase audio-reactive visuals, so for the full experience feel free to hover over and use the player controls to unmute any of them.

The 30-foot immersive Globe has a mirrored outer surface that reflects surrounding buildings. Inside, 15 ribs are embedded with more than 300,000 colored LEDs, 20 speakers, 6 subwoofers and 6 LiDAR sensors.