The Mercury City Tower, designed by veteran New York architect Frank Williams, is the second tallest building in Europe, standing at a height of over 330m in the heart of the Moscow International Business Center "Moscow City". With a highly distinctive shape and façade cladding in reflective bronze coloured panels, the tower has become an icon of the Moscow skyline. The LED Media Façade spans 15 meters in height and is spread over 4 floors at a height of 300 meters. It consist of more than 6.000 custom designed VML-Technologies Lattice LED strips which are integrated into the metal ventilation louvers covering the building façade, making it not only the highest LED Media Façade display in Europe, but also one of the largest, covering an area of 1.387sqm. The LED louver panels required a high level of transparency to allow the free flow of air, and should withstand high winds, severe icing in winter and rapid fluctuations in temperature between -40°C and +60°C. The LED louvers also had to fit seamlessly around oblique cladding elements and various service doors for building management units.
A total of eight different Lattice™ S-series LED strip models were custom designed to match the various oblique façade areas. The final mounting principle was developed in close cooperation with the architect and leading expert in architectural façade envelopes Gartner from Germany.