Recreating Zhang Yuan: Barco projections restore the historic landscape

Shanghai, CN - 2023

Covering an area of 43,800 square meters from Nanjing West Road in the north to Weihai Road in the south, Shanghai Zhang Yuan is the largest Shikumen complex in Shanghai with the most diverse architectural styles, which has nurtured numerous modern Shanghai cultures and brought together many memories of local Shanghainese alley life. As the epitome of the development and transformation of Shanghai's new-style public culture, Zhang Yuan combines projection technology with artistic creation to present a projection mapping exhibition, "Six acts of the light show - Centennial Zhang Yuan". Not only does it take on a new look at conservation and renovation, but it also provides the audience with an immersive experience of old Shanghai sentiments.

Key benefits

  • Flexible installation position and stable image display
  • Rich and accurate colors restore the scene precisely
  • Excellent blending and geometric correction effect
  • Barco team provides professional services

As an art exhibition with demanding visual requirements, seemingly unrelated elements of modern and vintage Shanghai-style and Chinese tradition are combined, allowing the audience to travel through the streetscape of Maoming North Road and the Shikumen alley in Zhang Yuan as if shuttling through time and space. With the help of Barco projectors, the architectural outlines of alleys are perfectly integrated, achieving a realistic visual experience and restoring the urban style of Shanghai.

Challenge

The unique historical architectural style of the centennial Zhang Yuan brings together 28 different types of Shikumen lane houses since the opening of treaty ports in Shanghai, with nine alley facades along Maoming North Road. The diverse materials and complex construction of the building walls make it difficult to achieve a unified visual effect when presenting a large-area projection. Moreover, to fully demonstrate the real-life memories in Shanghai's century-old alleys, there are highly demanding requirements for color expressiveness of the projectors.

Besides, because of the complex building shapes of the centennial Zhang Yuan, the projection areas dimensions need to be adjusted one by one, which requires a high level of warping and blending performances of the projectors.

Solution

Considering that there are many alleys and complex terrain in Zhang Yuan and the fact that the projection carrier must be presented by nine different alley facades, the design team selected a total of thirty-four Barco ultra-high brightness laser projectors for five different scenes in Zhang Yuan.

Barco UDX series projectors are dual-color laser-phosphor projectors with brightness up to 40,000 lumens, which is the best choice for outdoor projection. In addition, with the support of constant light output (CLO) technology, it can ensure the stability and consistency of long-term projection effects. At the same time, the UDX has the ultimate color expressiveness to present real images with consistent visual effects on different carriers.

The UDM also has an ultra-wide color gamut superior to Rec.709 color space. The 22,000 lumens brightness provided by UDM-W22 fully meets the needs of outdoor projection.

Results

Throughout the project, Barco perfectly combined the projection effect of its products with the scenery of every alley in Zhang Yuan through professional support services. Faced with the demanding challenges of numerous projection carriers of different sizes, Barco's installation team thought outside of the box and installed closely coordinated 34 ultra-high brightness laser projectors in the optimal positions. The powerful color reproduction and wide coverage, achieve a blend of scenes perfectly interpreting the customs and sentiments of Shanghai.

Moreover, the long warranty and good stability of the Barco projectors ensure long-term and reliable image output, allowing the optimal and worry-free display of Zhang Yuan's projection mapping show.

Barco projectors help us to present high-quality images with good product performance and create a visual feast.

Alex Pally

Co-founder of WB creative team

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