Projection Perceptions: An Immersive Downtown Niagara Falls

Oct 1

Projection mapping to draw visitors to main streets.

By: Raimondo and Associates Architects Inc.

The City of Niagara Falls has a history of using light to great effect to demarcate the Falls. Light excites and has been proven to alter moods, behaviour and create a greater emotional engagement with narratives.

The historic Queen Street district in Niagara Falls is the downtown core that offers a rich sense of place. Just minutes from the major tourist district that sees upwards of 8 million tourists a year, Queen Street was once a bustling hub of the city. Like many downtown cores, momentum has swung in the opposite direction since the COVID-19 pandemic.

This proposal showcases projection mapping as an innovative means to draw visitors to main street locales. Creating immersive environments by projecting entire visual stories, art or history on the built environment adds a new level of energy, impact and emotional connection to downtowns. At the heart of the design concept is the notion of viewing, the gaze and interpretation. Projection Perceptions is a journey; the spectator becomes part of the spectacle, by which the viewer can select, arrange and find meaning from the images, stories or views being projected. The design proposal demonstrates a way to increase visitor engagement and traffic on main streets, diversify revenue and stay relevant as people are drawn away from indoor spaces amid adapting restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

This design proposal also demonstrates awareness of historic buildings and their potential new role as beacons for spectacles, offering another path towards the preservation and revitalization of downtowns.

Details:

Budget: The cost of projection mapping depends on several factors. The major expense of this project would be the cost of the projectors as they are the soul requirement of any video immersing project. The cost of content creation and the possibility of hiring film makers and local historians would be another factor. Depending on the number of projectors required and the quality of the projectors, an overall cost could range from $10,000 to $100,000. The higher quality projector can provide network control, memory and content management software. The positives are greater than the price however, as the projectors allow for minimal intervention on the built environment and unlimited content creation.

Materials and Fabrication: Projection mapping is projecting pictures or videos on any 3D object. In this proposal, the customized content is fit into the geometry of downtown Queen Street Niagara Falls. The standard workflow and materials needed are projectors, software, content designers and surfaces (buildings). A simple process with minimal resources and intervention, projection mapping, can create immersive environments and breathe new life into main streets.

Installation and Other Services: Projectors can be installed on roofs or light-posts in order to maximize the illumination of the target surfaces. Advanced projection mapping can experiment with projections on various surfaces that are curved and more complex. Projectors provide minimal physical disturbance of the streetscape and built environment.