"Our window onto the city":
SPD NRW installs a large-format LED wall in Düsseldorf

The SPD North Rhine-Westphalia is going digital and installing a large-format LED wall that will serve as a “window on the city”, to inform citizens about its party-political programme.

The “window onto the city” will at the same time also offer art and culture a digital platform. Initiated by the architects of the building, EHRICHarchitekten from Düsseldorf, BlaueErdbeere and the art curator Wolfgang Wilhelm Sohn jointly created the project “Digital Gallery” exclusively for the LED wall. Various artists are presented here with their artworks. Via a future landing page, interested people can find out more about the individual art project and the artists.

The LED wall was installed high up on the Johannes-Rau-Haus. Alongside the LED hardware and the installation, BlaueErdbeere also supplied the SPD with the content management system needed to play content on it. After a software training session by BlaueErdbeere, the SPD will play its digital window onto the city on a schedule with a four-person editorial team.

In their words:

“In developing the screen design we deliberately set ourselves apart graphically from the SPD’s corporate design, so that the “Digital Gallery”, as a project in its own right, also gets a completely individual graphic frame. The digital signage software supplied lets the SPD editorial team develop and schedule the content with ease. Added-value content such as the weather and the time of course has to be included too”, says Fabienne Horch, project lead digital signage, BlaueErdbeere Werbetechnik.

“We at the SPD in NRW are pleased to be able to offer, here at our central building location with “Our Window onto the City”, specifically the people who live and work in Düsseldorf information and motifs, current for the day, that they themselves benefit from in everyday life. The project starts with a small content concept, which we want to keep expanding further and further over the coming weeks”, emphasises Marcel Atoui, press spokesman for the SPD North Rhine-Westphalia.

The challenge:

Carrying out the installation was a small challenge for BlaueErdbeere because of the central location of the SPD building, since the LED wall, at a size of 4 x 3 metres and a weight of over 800 kg, had to be installed with a 60-metre-high slewing crane. This required a municipal road closure of two carriageways at once. With the active support of the City of Düsseldorf, this too was possible, even at the CSC.

The client:

The NRWSPD is the largest state association of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). At the state office, the civic engagement of the approx. 90,000 members from across North Rhine-Westphalia is organised. Not far from the state parliament, the Rhine and the Rheinkniebrücke, the modern “Johannes-Rau-Haus” was newly built and newly opened in 2022. With the new video wall, the NRWSPD wants to create informative added value for the people in Düsseldorf at this central location. Our contact Marcel Atoui leads [since 2021] the press and public relations work of the SPD in North Rhine-Westphalia.