With its red, perforated aluminum "rain screen" and elongated oval shape, this quirky office building for a large "outdoor advertising" company in New Delhi, India, was intended to resemble a thumbprint—though it actually looks more like a watermelon. Or maybe a half-gutted fish. Designed by local firm Anagram Architects, "The Digit" building has a swirling ceiling in the lobby that evokes a thumbprint, and, according to the architects, a façade with "the split second impact of a roadside billboard." It's hard to disagree.
In the holes of the building's face are tiny, colorful "pixels" that rotate as the wind blows. The overall effect is probably meant to resemble an artisanal LED screen, though it makes the screen look full of melon seeds. As such, the high-design approach to a pixelated thumbprint inadvertently makes this watermelon-like building a piece of literal architecture. But, hey, who needs buildings that actually look like the random objects they were supposed to resemble, anyway?
· Anagram Architects [Official site]
· Anagram Architects Faces Office Building With Dynamic Pixelated Screen [Design Boom]
· All Office Spaces posts [Curbed National]