Melbourne wide format printer Billboard Media has printed the biggest building mesh cover in Australia, and one of the biggest in the world.
The 5000sqm cover of Melbourne’s GPO shopping centre took one month to print and three weeks to assemble and earned the company the Outdoor Advertising award and Overall Grand Winner in the sign and display category at the recent HP Awards at the recent Dscoop event.
At 20 meters high to conceal the main building and 53 metres high to cover the spire, it is the biggest ever printed construction mural in Australia, and one of the biggest in the world.
The cover was printed onto building mesh in five metre wide sections and welded together or joined with 20 metre long zippers and secured with wires and other fastenings to the scaffolding around the building.
[Related: More winners at Dscoop]
Billboard Media sales director David Zeunert says the mesh stayed up for about nine months as part of a major refurbishment of the outside of the historic building done every 25 years.
“To protect the public from dust and other cleaning processes builders have to put up construction mesh, but they didn’t want shoppers to think it was closed by putting up a black mesh or something,” he says.
“Using a printed mural allowed the GPO to not lose business while effectively concealing the massive maintenance project.”
Zeunert says the job was very expensive and complex but Billboard Media’s experience in smaller projects was up to the task.
“It’s never been done before and it shows,” he says.
“It was quite a complex job, it took a lot of strategy and planning to print something that big and be able to pull it tight around the building like a blanket.
“Because of our reputation as specialist wide format printers we were approached and asked if this could be done and since we have done smaller versions in the past we were able to work it out.”
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