Distinctive Wall Murals in Tempe, AZ for Upscale Apartment High-rise

Let’s say you are the owner of an upscale high-rise apartment building and you want each floor to have a distinctive character and flavor. That was the requirement presented to Designs Phoenix for a new apartment building on the north end of the Arizona State University campus. The building has 19 floors, 16 of which are residence levels. Each of the sixteen needed to have a distinctive look when the elevators opened.

The solution: Each floor got a unique mural designed for the wall opposite the elevators — but not just any mural. The building has a very modern vibe with high ceilings and exposed duct work; textured, exposed concrete walls; floor to ceiling windows; bright graphics; and a full-wall video array in the second floor lounge. The murals needed to be in sync with that design character.

Each mural is a photo realistic landscape, the overall size of which is forty feet wide by nine feet high. However, each landscape was modified – the sky and ground colors were transposed and twelve inch wide diagonal stripes of contrasting colors were added. The effect is dramatic, transforming large scale landscapes into modern art pieces. The landscape scene is still very much present, but it takes on a surreal look and feel. One further design complication was the existence of an apartment entrance door in the middle of each mural wall. So the murals were split at the entrance by a diagonal bright yellow-gold painted band that encompassed the apartment door.

For the murals, Designs Phoenix used a textured vinyl material manufactured by DreamScape Wall coverings. We used their Pique Embossed material for its fabric-like look and feel. We printed 52” wide by 111” high panels on our HP L25500 Designjet latex printer, which allowed a 1” panel-overlap for installation. Each panel was marked by floor and number sequence within the mural. The installation team was provided with a detailed muralpanel layout plan for each floor. All told we printed a quarter mile of Pique material. Below is some of the material ready to be loaded and taken to the site. As we were on a tight schedule to beat the start of the fall semester, we delivered murals to the installers as they were completed while printing/prepping the next ones.

Here are some of the more dramatic murals, after installation.

This was a large-scale graphics project, but at Designs Phoenix, no project is too large or too small. If you have a wall that needs a dramatic makeover, please contact us for a free consultation and quote.