The project „Public Brewing“ is an interactive Media Facade on the building of the Uerige Home Brewery in Düsseldorf. In this project the brewing process – from crushing of the malt to the fermentation and on through to the bottling – is visualized by means of a rear projection onto the windows of the facade. At a control desk located in front of the building the visitor can steer the process by operating buttons, pumps and cranks and thereby brew his own beer. This appears, after it has been virtually bottled, as a real bottle at the control desk and can be taken home. When nobody works on the controls and „brews“ beer, brewery employees run around in a bored manner over the facade and signalize in this way that they would like to get on with the job. Now and again there are some surprising scenes visible. A beer thief might sneak around, or an employee might stagger drunkenly through the scenery.

Unlike ordinary media facades this project addresse all senses. It allows not only a visual experience, but delivers simultaneously acoustical and tactile stimuli and in the end also serves the sense of taste when the „tasty droplets“, as the brewery calls its beer are sampled.

This experience is bolstered by special effects on the facade and at the control desk. By means of a fog machine real steam is created in addition to the virtual steam visible during the brewing process on the facade. Various indicators on the control desk relay information – depending on the brewing phase – about the temperature, the pressure and the flow of the beer.

The interactive Media Facade was to be seen in the Altstadt of Duesseldorf in June 2014.