How to bring walls to life with three-dimensional solutions

Say sayonara to smooth painted walls and farewell to flat wallpaper; these are the latest ways to create striking feature walls that literally impose themselves onto interior environments.

By coverdec.one, mode:lina architekci, and James Wormald

February 7, 2022 | 11:00 pm CUT

New York's Paradise Club at the Edition Hotel uses a video wall to extend the visual space of the venue's stage. Photo: Nikolas Koenig

Statement interiors leave a lasting impression on both frequent and infrequent users, whether with striking pieces of furniture, oversized lighting or even a bold feature wall. The very best creations, however, don’t need to beg for attention to be recounted afterwards, they let praise come to them with a peacocking presence so extravagant, it’s impossible not to take notice.

The third dimension – depth – is one often unexplored on vertical surfaces, yet it represents the next evolutionary leap in statement feature walls. More and more manufacturers are using depth and texture to make walls stand out from the crowd, with innovative new techniques, materials and technologies. Here’s how they do it.

The Paradise Club customises its theatrical lighting with RGB lights and a professional rig (top), while ASB GlassFloor provides illuminated video on reinforced surfaces (bottom). Photo: Nikolas Koenig (top)

Video walls

Once installed correctly and combined with the appropriate lighting effects, video walls can provide artificial depth to an environment of any size. The exclusive Paradise Club, for example, in the high-rise Edition Hotel in New York’s Times Square, creates a fully immersive three-dimensional entertainment venue by combining a video wall at the rear of the stage, with low-resolution RGB lights on the ceiling and various other lighting rigs.

Manufacturers like ASB GlassFloor, meanwhile, can position similar plug-and-play screens – protected by reinforced glass – as walls, ceilings or even floors.

Sections of the waiting room wall at Le Belem Dental Center are left mysteriously ajar (top), while Ronda Design's Caddy Tilt panelling (bottom) can create the same effect. Photo: Marca Corona (top)

Hidden lights

Slightly more subtle wall motifs, such as the reception space backdrop in this Bordelais dental clinic, prefer to hide their lights under a bushel. With just a glimpse of light visible through each door left ajar, the wall is reminiscent of the infamous Pulp Fiction briefcase scene. Much like in the film, dental clients’ inability to see inside only adds to the mystery.

Three-dimensional illuminated facades like this can be provided by companies such as Ronda Design, whose Caddy Tilt panels can be specified in a variety of colours, metals and angles.

The Grotta Aeris sculpture at the Wells Fargo Capitol Center feels like the Cave of Wonders entrance (top), and De Castelli's metallic panels (bottom) create custom sculptured walls. Photo: Alan Tansey (top)

Metallic material

A glorious shine can be reflected from metallic surfaces all by themselves, of course. Growing over a doorway in the Wells Fargo Capitol Center lobby in North Carolina, USA, Grotta Aeris is a crystalline installation of copper-finished composite panels that gives the impression of infectious wealth, with raw gold blooming through the walls of the financial services giant’s offices.

Brands like De Castelli, meanwhile, provide less intrusive customisable three-dimensional panels of steel, brass or copper. With square, circular, hexagonal and leaf-shaped elements available.

These handmade egg-box tiles give House AD25 an exclusive feel (top, middle) while Marca Corona's 4D range (bottom) does the same. Photo: Fernando Guerra | FG+SG (top, middle)

Tiled patterns

Green, handmade, three-dimensional tiles cover three sides of the swimming pool area at this Portuguese villa, House AD25 in Lisbon, by João Tiago Aguiar, arquitectos. By wrapping over the segregated garage and outdoor shower block, and covering the house’s rear wall, the colour and depth of the tiles help the structures blend into the background of young trees.

The motif continues inside, meanwhile, with the same tiles, recreated in white, adding visual intrigue to light-filled communal stairwells and hallways. Marca Corona’s 4D range is a suitable example of how colourful porcelain stoneware can add depth to interior environments.

The slatted wooden panels in this juice bar (top) make an enticing storefront and interior, while Mikodam creates geometric wooden solutions (bottom) with acoustic properties

Geometric wood panels

In the high, narrow space of this juice bar in Los Angeles, USA, geometric Baltic-Birch panels draw customers’ eyes upwards, distracting them from the restricted dimensions of the store’s footprint. Starting at the venue’s storefront, a parametric slat design entices thirsty consumers inside, before seating them comfortably in the seemingly expansive space.

Wood panelling experts Mikodam, meanwhile, manufacture customisable geometric panels from a variety of natural and renewable materials, including different woods and fabrics, to form walls with acoustic properties.

Old stock is utilised at this furniture showroom as distinctively colourful baffles (top), while renewable cork tiles (bottom) from coverdec.one are the next best thing. Photo: Patryk Lewiński (top)

Recycled materials

Those looking for an environmentally-conscious way to add sound absorption to commercial spaces would do well to beat this solution found by mode:lina architekci, however. This contract furniture showroom created for both the Swedish brand Flokk and Polish manufacturer Profm, included a distinctive multi-coloured, multi-apex wall, visible from all ends of the store as well as the street. Affixed with over 130 frameless Flokk RBM Noor chairs, acting as acoustic baffles, the wall cuts a distinguishing presence.

For those without a storeroom full of old chairs at their disposal, however, there are plenty of environmentally friendly three-dimensional wall covering solutions, such as these completely recyclable and renewable cork panels from coverdec.one.

The 9m-tall green wall in Singapore (top), Ekomoss' 35-sqm moss wall in Slovakia (middle), and Greenmood's curved semi-private meeting space (bottom) Photos: Mr Edward Hendricks (top), EL | MO Visual (middle)

Carbon-capturing green walls

If diminishing your carbon footprint is your thing, naturally three-dimensional green walls actually give back to the planet. The appropriately-named Green Wall House in Singapore by ADX Architects features a living, growing wall that runs up alongside the home’s upper two storeys and terrace. Combined with floor-to-ceiling windows, the green wall provides both visual stimulation and freshly filtered air to those inside when they need them, or to the local environment when they don’t.

Moss walls purify the air around them by removing up to 82 per cent of the fine dust of air pollution

Alternatively, moss walls purify the air around them by removing up to 82 per cent of the fine dust of air pollution. Moss walls like this self-sustained one created by Ekomoss at the Business Centre Košice III in Košice, Slovakia, provide a stunning statement of a company’s green credentials as a large lobby installation. While the technique can also be used on a smaller scale to provide natural, protective environments, like the customisable solutions from Greenmood.

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