Airport: Beauty and the Curved Beast

Seoul | Digital lighthouse installations should, first and foremost, attract attention, considered attractive and shared online. The 23 meter high media tower at Seoul Incheon Airport ticks all three boxes. Likewise the well-published semicircular OLED ceiling installation at ICN airport, which has already been uninstalled. invidis reporting from Korea.

When it comes to digital lighthouses at airports, the names Samsung and LG usually come up. But there is still room for additional screen manufacturer in the home country of the two digital signage giants. To our surprise, we discovered the “Super-Large LED Media Tower” at Seoul Incheon Airport, which has hardly been reported on outside of Korea. After a long period of research, we also discovered the reason for the media silence – because the 23 meter high digital lighthouse installed in 2019 comes from the largely unknown Korean LED specialist Samik Electronics.

The media tower in the departure hall of Terminal 1 is massive and hard to miss. The content is remarkable. In addition to DooH campaigns from Johnnie Walker to the Korean beauty label d’Alba developed specifically for the 22K resolution screen, we really liked the airport’s own CGI content. Rarely have we been spontaneously so impressed by a digital signage installation – not just the image but also the installation quality of the mathematically 1.8 millimeter pixel pitch LED.

The LED media tower in the Millennium Hall is 23 meters high and 9.9 meters wide, plus an additional 3.6 meters deep on both sides. At the base of the media tower there is a stage on which cultural performances are presented. For this purpose, the LED media tower can also be divided into several content zones.

We particularly liked the digital art with animated flights from Korea to various world cities. But the two DooH campaigns played during our visit also exploit the potential of LEDs both technically and creatively.

Beyond beauty – the Curved OLED beast?

In contrast to the widely unknown LED tower, another Incheon airport digital signage installation was very well-known globally. For a few years LG showcased a Curved-OLED ceiling installation, but it was apparently dismantled during the pandemic.

The curved OLED beast has so far been the airport’s digital signage landmark. It remains to be seen whether the media tower is a worthy successor. We believe – the LED tower is a worthy successor.