You’re gonna need a bigger scanner. These 10 larger than life Universal Product Barcode emblazoned buildings epitomize the digitization of modern society.
1. Middelburg, Netherlands, by Hercuton
Images via: Bouwgroep Peters BV
The plainly-named Barcode Building is one of the newest (completed 2011) large structures in the very old city of Middelburg, the Netherlands. Architects of the Dutch design & build organization Hercuton were charged by their client with creating a building that not only looked modern, but both the layout and infrastructure had to reflect today’s environmentally-friendly aesthetic.
Image via: Henk Kosters
The white walls of the Barcode Building are broken up by vertical strips of tinted window glass that extend from the top of the four-story structure down to the open parking garage beneath the building at street level. The use of random six-digit numbers beneath each stack of three windows reinforces the illusion of a giant barcode while adding visual interest to the structure as a whole.
2. Shtrikh Kod Building, St. Petersburg, Russia
Images via: Eikongraphia
Shtrikh Kod means “Barcode Building” in Russian, which is appropriate since there’s really no other way to describe it. The edifice, located in historic St. Petersburg, was designed by Vitruvius & Sons Studio and it was completed in 2007.
Image via: Eikongraphia
Kudos to photographer Alexey Naroditsky for capturing the stark yet striking exterior of the Barcode Building. It should be noted that one of the commenters at the Eikongraphia website where Naroditsky’s images are on display opined that “The facade’s hue is close to that of the red 633nm laser light commonly used in bar code scanners.” Coincidence?
3. Melbourne Theosophical Society, Melbourne, Australia
The Melbourne Theosophical Society Bookshop & Library at 126 Russell Street appears much like any other mid-century yellow brick building except for one thing…an odd inset space on the facade that holds a barcode! The roughly two-story tall barcode encompasses a pair of windows and would seem to be a later addition to the building. Why is it there and what does it mean? That’s a rather theosophical question best left for others to wrestle with.
4. Recall Information Centre, Greystanes, New South Wales, Australia
Staying in the antipodes for the moment, we present an uncharacteristically lively warehouse designed by Thierry Lacoste from Lacoste + Stevenson Architects. Built for the Recall company to store nearly four and a half million archive boxes of corporate records, the building’s exterior is made from 21,000 square meters od steel cladding sourced from BlueScope Lysaght.
Image via: Specifier
“Barcodes are at the centre of everything which Recall does,” explains Thierry Lacoste. “That was the first consideration, then there was the challenge of how to handle a very big wall area. We decided on the barcode theme to break up its visual impact then worked on a couple of ideas before we finally specified a pattern which is actually Recall’s Australian Business Number as a barcode.” Recall operates 250 state-of-the-art information centres around the world but only one sports the Greystanes centre's wild barcode exterior graphics.
5. Barcode Halls, Nanhui New City, China
Images via: GMP
Nanhui New City (formerly known as Lingang New City) is a planned city located in the Pudong New Area of Shanghai, China that has been under construction since 2003 with a projected completion date of 2020. The city was designed by German architectural firm Gerkan, Marg and Partners, and if the stunning Barcode Halls building is any indication, Nanhui New City will be the IN place to be seven years hence.
6. Cuatro Caminos Square, A Coruña, Galicia, Spain
Image via: Panoramio/Cebreiro
Cuatro Caminos Square in the historic centre of A Coruña is looking mighty spiffy these days, the multi-storey Optica Lopsy building in particular.
A portion of the front facade three stories high and four wide has been visually augmented with a set of barcode stripes. Successfully and appealingly incorporating a modern barcode onto a wall & window design obviously not built to anticipate such things is quite the accomplishment.
7. Barcode Building by Jan Timm
Image via: order, rhythm and pattern
The so-called Barcode Building by Jan Timm is a lot smaller than most architectural barcode-based building designs - more of a Barcode House than a Barcode Building but let’s not split hairs here. Architect Graham Shawcross discovered this charming digital design but didn’t provide any info besides the image above. You’re still free to scan it to your heart’s content.
8. George Square, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
The University of Edinburgh has been redeveloping the city’s venerable George Square since the 1960s and the building above is one of the newest additions. The two images above show the nearly-completed, barcode-faced building through the camera lenses of two Flickr users who captured it unbeknownst to one another, one week apart in the fall of 2009.
9. Zonker Kookies, Nashua, New Hampshire, USA
Image via: Intel
The former HP Software Engineering Facility and before that, a DEC software engineering lab in Nashua, New Hampshire, was designed in the late 1970s with a clearly-stated, barcode-related theme. The original “Zonker Kookies” building featured a double row of 182 black & white bars set against a bright red-orange background. The bars were arranged in 13 groups of 7 bars with the ASCII translation being “digitalsoftwa/reengineering”. A later renovation saw the background changed to a neutral gray hue and the barcode bars were rearranged to spell out “customers win/whenwedeliver” but two of the lower level bars were positioned incorrectly (and were never fixed).
Images via: GUI Maker/Eric Schott
Nowadays the building’s facade sports neither bars nor codes but there’s a memorial of sorts on display in the former ZK2 building’s cafeteria: a three-cluster, wall-mounted barcode that spells out “Nashua Tech Park”.
10. Mystery Barcode Building
Image via: bhkenlo
Have you seen this barcode building…because it is awesome! It’s also something of a mystery since Flickr user bhkenlo posted but a single snap of the edifice without including any information regarding where it is or when the photo was taken. Other images of the building have failed to turn up in online searches so perhaps one of our eagle-eyed readers can offer up some hints.
Image via: Hochschule Luzern
It may have been a commercial/cultural game changer back in the 1970s but the barcode is beginning to show its age. Even architects are beginning to leave barcodes behind, looking instead at their logical digital heir, the QR Code. The N Building in Tokyo is one of the first QR Code Buildings and it’s as intimate and interacting as one might expect: passers-by can aim their mobile devices at the building’s front facade to learn what’s happening inside. We’re guessing it’s not an exhibition of barcode art.
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