Helsinki's annual Lux Helsinki light festival brings light art to the winter city and attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors every year. One of the central works of the 2024 festival was seen on the facade of the Ateneum Art Museum, where the projection work “Unikko at La Louvière”, a collaboration between Marimekko and Ateneum, was presented.

The work celebrated the 60th anniversary of Marimekko's iconic Unikko pattern and combined the history of Finnish design and fine arts. The visual ensemble was based on an animation designed by Katri Tikkanen, in which the shapes and colors of the Unikko pattern continuously transformed into a living light art work on the decorative facade of the Ateneum. The music for the work was composed by Matti Ahopelto.

Capital AV was responsible for the technical implementation and projection system of the work. The facade of the Ateneum served as a projection surface over 8000 pixels wide , onto which the animation was projected using six Barco UDX 4K32 projectors . The projectors were placed in two projection towers and the implementation was built to withstand the challenging conditions of the Helsinki winter.

The projection content was run on Green Hippo Hippotizer media servers , which enabled high-resolution animations and a continuous presentation of the work lasting several hours.

Winter implementation brought its own technical challenges to the project.

During the festival, temperatures dropped as low as -20 degrees , which is why a heated control and work space was built for the projection technology near the projector towers.

The end result was that the facade of the Ateneum was transformed into a living light artwork, where Marimekko's iconic pattern and the history of Finnish art met. The work became one of Lux Helsinki's most visible and photographed installations.