The I Board is an intelligent billboard, uniting different programmatic elements in one single structure.
The design is developed for Costa Rican based outdoor advertisement company Colorvision. Based on an analysis of the existing carriers of information, we propose a new toolbox of two and three dimensional objects for the display of commercial outdoor advertising in Central America. Next to the commercial information, the I Board is equipped with GPS orientation and tracking devices as well as lighting and message boards, informing the passer by about the specific location, cultural activities and traffic congestions.
Besides the newly developed freestanding structures, we propose a set of options to integrate the outdoor advertisement business into existing urban objects such as buses or landmark buildings. Doing so, we respond to both the needs of the company to develop surfaces that can be used for their purposes, and to the wish of a majority of the population in the metropolitan areas of Costa Rica that demands to clean up the large number of ramshackle or pirate structures that have created an undesired visual dominion over the urban landscape.
Not only addressing design issues, the content displayed on the outdoor advertisement equipment has been reviewed.
Next to the commercial information, a certain percentage is now used for social and cultural messages. The I Board as a carrier of cultural information has successfully been implemented as the outdoor component of A foundation's exhibition on Migration and Urban Development. Creating further additional value, the illumination of the I Board placed at strategic locations has helped to improve public security in the formerly dark parts of town.
Credit
Oliver Schütte with Federico Rodriguez.
San Jose, Costa Rica, 2006.