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The Plaza Hotel—or is it?

Projects | October 1, 2016 | By:

A perfect rendering of the Plaza Hotel on large-format banners won an inaugural Hewlett-Packard Inkspiration Award.  Photo: Britten Studios.
A perfect rendering of the Plaza Hotel on large-format banners won an inaugural Hewlett-Packard Inkspiration Award.
Photo: Britten Studios.

When the Plaza Hotel in New York City was undergoing architectural renovation a few years ago, managers wanted to present its “best face” to the public. So they contracted Britten Studios, a Traverse City, Mich., manufacturer of banners and signs, to create a building wrap to hide the hotel’s edifice during construction.

Britten recreated the hotel’s façade using tromp l’oeil, an artistic technique that creates an illusion that truly looks like the real thing. The wrap perfectly mirrored the Plaza’s white clay brick exterior; each window, brick, sill and sconce was meticulously drawn by hand and digitally printed onto multiple vinyl mesh banners.

The finished wrap, composed of 18 large banners, covered 62,000 square feet, a space larger than a football field. It was attached to the construction scaffolding. Ultimately, the building wrap completely hid the renovation and delighted passersby.

The project was chosen among a field of 150 entrants to win the Hewlett-Packard inaugural Inkspiration Award for excellence in creative print design in the large-format banner category.

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