Should anyone ask, a wall of felt pixels

The floor is wood, the wall is wood. The challenge is to avoid everything being too “woody”.

So we have a 16 meters of wall (diagram below holding the doors that lead to the lounge, workroom, bedroom 3 and bedroom 2) that could be painted white. Or, felted… 

Additionally the end of the passage has a light installation that looks something like this:

• 

• 

So what if we were continue that pixelation over to the wall around it – albeit not illuminated and perhaps more colourful (3 bit colour?).

Felt? Why Felt?

I started looking around at materials for the wall and realised that this block of the apartment leads to the sleeping rooms – so something cozy and soft-ish. And the big win from using felt: sound absorption! A hard floor, second wall, and glass ceiling could lead to a very echo-y corridor. So thinking about other materials starts to become important. Felt is also reasonably priced (potential suppliers include VFG and Filzfabrik).

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

So I started with a Pinterest Board: Pixel Wall Some of the options I like are the restrained pallets like this. I also like the three-dimensionality of the wall. Perhaps wooden blocks behind felt could create a similar effect.

• 

• 

One interesting aspect of the passage wall is that doors are hidden. A panel can be a panel or could be a door. You don’t know until you push. Right now it’s:

• Panel
• Panel
• Panel
• Door to bedroom 2
• Panel
• Door to bedroom 3
• Panel
• Door to front door wardrobe (1)
• Door to front door wardrobe (2)
• Panel
• Door to Workroom
• Panel / hiding sliding door to Lounge
• Gap/sliding door to louge
• Fireplace 
• Gap/other sliding door to lounge
• Final Panel / other sliding door to lounge.

It’s a long list. But the point is that this is a continuous space punctuated by access to rooms. Which leaves us with two approaches:

1. Ignore the panneling and design for a single pixelated image or gradient that spans the entire hallway.
2. make each panel/door different (there will still be no indicator as to which are doors and which are panels.)

Assuming option (1) and going for a giant pattern that spans the 16 meters and LED board at the end of the passage (±1.5m) side passage (±5M).  For most of the way the height will be 3.4m.

Summary: we need a pixelated display that is 21.5meters long x 3.4m high = ± 70m²!

• Assuming 10cm “pixels” we end up with 7000 pixels.
• Assuming 20cm “pixels” we end up with 1750 pixels. 

This is where I need your help:

I’d like to generate the pixel pattern from a limited set of colours and heights  (perhaps varying between 5mm, 10mm and 15mm in front of the wall). The colour palette should be reasonably restrained (perhaps a maximum of 5 colours) since each colour will be another order of felt rolls. 

So there you have it. The future is felted. If you have ideas for a quick algorithm to generate a pixel felt wall, I’d love to experiment together.