Christie LED welcomes visitors to the Barbican

​WOKINGHAM, UK – (May 25, 2017) - Christie® Direct View LED has been installed above the Barbican's Silk Street entrance, welcoming thousands of visitors to the Centre each day and providing a clear and bright identity to the Barbican's main entrance that can be seen from afar. The 'Day One' content is a welcome message set against a skyline of London. The skyline is – appropriately - as seen from the top of Cromwell Tower in the Barbican Estate and the Barbican in-house marketing team will be creating future bespoke content themselves.

Sir Nicholas Kenyon, Managing Director of the Barbican said, "We're thrilled with the new addition to our Silk Street entrance. Christie's screens create a bright, dynamic welcome for our audiences and we look forward to creating imaginative, vibrant content to greet and inform our visitors."

"The Barbican is an absolutely iconic venue and also a listed building," said James Belso, Senior Sales Manager, Christie. "However the team wanted to give the Silk Street entrance much more identity to guide visitors and grab people's attention. Direct LED technology was pretty much the only practical solution to cope with the high ambient daylight and long runtimes. The install provided some challenges – for example as a listed building, no major changes could be made to the building without the necessary planning permission, which the Barbican were granted by the City of London."

The seamless strip of 28 tiles (in a 14x2 letter-box strip) needed to be seen from the outside, yet be fixed inside behind several glass panels above the glass doors to the long entrance.  Measuring nearly 7 metres across the signage can be seen from a distance as you turn into Silk Street. This unusually shaped signage will have tailored images and messages created in-house by the Barbican's marketing department. "The team will create native resolution content which is pixel perfect for the specific configuration," noted Belso. "It will be completely tailored and designed to look and fit into the fabric of this listed building." Ryan Nelson, Senior Marketing Manager (Digital) of The Barbican commented: "This is a fantastic opportunity for the Barbican to welcome audiences to the Centre with beautiful and bold visuals that are dynamic, eye-catching and reflect our brand. We are excited about the possibilities this unlocks for us, and we're keen to use this site to showcase what goes on inside the Barbican from the moment visitors arrive."

"The Christie Direct LED, as with all our other display and projection at the Barbican, is played out and managed by our Christie Pandoras Box media players. It's wonderful to have the opportunity to display a range of solutions right in the heart of the City, and in such a public and iconic space," added Belso.

The LED signage follows the installation of several Christie projectors inside the building including laser phosphor projectors to support the Barbican's new programme to display art in its public spaces. 

A world-class arts and learning organisation, the Barbican pushes the boundaries of all major art forms including dance, film, music, theatre and visual arts. Its creative learning programme further underpins everything it does. Over 1.1 million people attend events annually, hundreds of artists and performers are featured, and more than 300 staff work onsite. The architecturally renowned centre opened in 1982 and comprises the Barbican Hall, the Barbican Theatre, The Pit, Cinemas One, Two and Three, Barbican Art Gallery, a second gallery The Curve, foyers and public spaces, a library, Lakeside Terrace, a glasshouse conservatory, conference facilities and three restaurants. The City of London Corporation is the founder and principal funder of the Barbican Centre.​​