Trading Secrets

It makes sense that the renovation of NASDAQ’s Marketsite entry lobby in a New York office building lobby would be “content-driven.” As the world’s largest electronic stock market, NASDAQ is all about the near instantaneous collection, analysis and distribution of digital information. Accordingly, Gensler designed the 3000-square-foot welcome space as a virtual theater extravaganza, combining real time electronic financial news, statistics, market data and multimedia content personalized for key visitors.

“At the inception of the project, this space had essentially lain fallow in terms of communications potential,” says senior project manager Linda Jacobs of Gensler. “Our assignment was to repurpose the space into a showcase for the NASDAQ brand, a welcoming destination where market opening and closing bell ceremonies take place, officials of prestigious listed companies come to be celebrated and significant announcements are made to the press. The objective was to enhance the human qualities of the NASDAQ enterprise merging digital media and design.”

Previously, the lobby space had been dominated by a one-and-a-half story glass elevator, a structure which presented both a challenge and, ultimately, an opportunity. Gensler’s solution was to transform the elevator surround into a dynamic design element integrating a large-scale multimedia focal point with changeable LED “mood” uplighting at the base. The curved structure was wrapped with acrylic screen substrates specially coated to accept digitally projected images. The various surface panels are able to display virtually any type of digital content, which may include graphics, text, photo images, live video footage, real time market data, ticker messages and community service information. The projection system can also simulcast elements of the famous electronic display located just outside the lobby at 43rd and Broadway in Times Square.

One of the most effective applications is welcoming vignettes for visiting NASDAQ-listed clients, typically invited on-site to open and close the market. These presentations blend human elements (such as a photo of the company’s ceo) with custom financial analysis (such as a matrix mapping the company’s relative performance status in its respective market sector).

From a technical perspective, the projection system is straightforward, mature technology. Nevertheless, says Jacobs, the actual implementation of the system required hours of good old-fashioned trial and error to achieve the proper balance of image brightness with ambient lighting, and to position the presentation content accurately on the slightly curved panels.

Digital display technology is deployed creatively in other areas, as well. Behind the reception desk, market update statistics appear to float in mid-air, on a 40-in. Hitachi HoloProScreen specialty projection panel, which is all but invisible until content is projected onto its surface. The effect is both elegant and dramatic.

Elsewhere, a slightly whimsical countdown “clock” provides the backdrop for the daily market closing ceremony. Each digital numeral is formed on an individual “high tech” 14-in. LCD screen in the retro style of the early electronic age.

Driving the whole show is NASDAQ’s on-site team of electronic media professionals, who operate the equivalent of a private digital broadcast studio. This group is tasked with sourcing, repurposing, deploying and sometimes creating all the customized content projected around the lobby. Operating 14 hours a day, this collective “man behind the curtain” cranks a multimedia machine that defines the NASDAQ Marketsite experience.

Sean O’Leary is VM+SD's Technical Editor

Photography: Michael Moran, New York