THE CLIENT
IQHQ is a life science real estate development company focused on creating urban districts in key innovation hubs across the United States and United Kingdom. The company develops environments where life science, business, technology, lifestyle, and community intersect.
One of IQHQ's flagship developments is RaDD — the Research and Development District — a 10-acre, six-block waterfront district in San Diego. Located directly along San Diego Bay, the development brings together life science, office, retail, dining, public art, green space, and event experiences across approximately 1.7 million square feet.
Project Highlight: IQHQ's RaDD Immersion Room
THE PROJECT
IQHQ partnered with DCBolt Productions, Imerza, and LEDX Group to create an immersive visualization environment designed to bring the scale and vision of RaDD to life.
At the heart of the RaDD Leasing Center, the Immersion Room gives prospective tenants, partners, investors, and other stakeholders a completely new way to experience the development.
DCBolt served as the project's designer, hardware provider, and audiovisual integrator, bringing together the LED technology, processing, infrastructure, control systems, and physical installation required to create the experience.
Imerza developed the custom software and photorealistic digital twin that powers the visualization environment, while LEDX Group provided the project's custom 0.9mm COB LED technology and next-generation cabinet system.
The result is a 54-million-pixel immersive environment that combines a 270-degree panoramic LED canvas, a large-format LED table, physical architectural models, and real-time digital visualization into a single interactive storytelling platform.
“The dynamic aspects of the site, what it feels like to actually be here and the promise of what RaDD can be, this system allows us to bring all of that to life.”
— Ashley Simpson, VP of Design, IQHQ
The centerpiece of the Immersion Room is a sweeping 270-degree panoramic LED wall measuring 405 square feet.
Built from 186 LED cabinets containing 1,488 individual 0.9mm Chip-on-Board (COB) LED modules, the wall delivers an extraordinary 19,840 × 2,160 pixel canvas.
At the center of the room, a 12' × 9' LED table provides a second large-format visualization surface, incorporating another 48 LED cabinets and 384 0.9mm COB modules.
Together, the wall and table deliver approximately 54 million pixels, surrounding visitors with an exceptionally high-resolution representation of RaDD.
But the experience isn't limited to digital imagery.
The LED table incorporates 30 physical 3D-printed scale models representing buildings throughout RaDD and the surrounding area. The physical models work in concert with the digital twin, allowing IQHQ's team to move seamlessly between tangible architecture and real-time digital visualization.
The result is a spatial storytelling platform that allows visitors to understand not just individual buildings, but the relationship between the buildings, the waterfront, public spaces, and the greater district.
IQHQ RaDD San Diego Immersion Room Installation
BRINGING RaDD TO LIFE
At the center of the experience is Imerza's photorealistic digital twin of RaDD, paired with a custom iPad control application developed specifically for IQHQ.
Rather than simply displaying pre-rendered content, the system allows IQHQ's team to navigate the development in real time and build presentations around the specific interests of each prospective tenant or stakeholder.
Presenters can move between aerial views, development visualization, branded environmental graphics, videos, leasing stories, data-driven visualization, and detailed views of individual areas of the district.
This allows the experience to adapt to the conversation happening in the room. The result is a sales and marketing tool that can communicate both the present reality and future vision of RaDD.
“The immersive experience really lets us bring to life a lot of the data and information that's difficult to convey on paper. We're also able to show potential tenants what the district will look like by the time they move in and everything is fully activated.”
— Nara Lee, Senior Director of Marketing, IQHQ
DESIGNED FOR PRECISION
Before construction began, DCBolt developed a complete 3D visualization of the Immersion Room using its proprietary design software.
The digital environment allowed the project team to visualize the complete room in advance, coordinate the LED surfaces, table, sightlines, physical models, infrastructure, and content areas, and identify potential challenges before hardware arrived onsite.
That same philosophy of precision continued throughout installation.
DCBolt implemented a new real-time LED test-pattern workflow that identifies every cabinet and individual module as it is installed. Technicians can immediately verify that each module is functioning correctly, displaying the full color space, and occupying its intended position.
If a damaged or defective module is discovered, it can be replaced immediately rather than becoming a troubleshooting problem after the entire system has been assembled.
By the time the final module was installed, the system was already fully functional and properly aligned.
A NEW GENERATION OF LED TECHNOLOGY
Much of what makes the RaDD Immersion Room remarkable is hidden behind the finished experience. The project represents the first deployment of LEDX Group's new cabinet design and 0.9mm COB technology, incorporating a first-of-its-kind three-axis interlocking system.
The cabinets mechanically interlock in all three axes, maintaining XYZ alignment to a sub-0.1mm tolerance.
For a large, continuous fine-pitch LED environment, that precision has a significant impact on installation.
Three technicians installed all 1,872 LED modules in just two days, with alignment achieved as the final module was installed.
Traditional fine-pitch LED installations can require extensive micro-adjustments before, during, and after installation. The new LEDX cabinet architecture dramatically reduces that process by mechanically establishing alignment as the system is assembled.
The innovation extends to the corners of the panoramic wall.
Where the room's surfaces make 90-degree turns, the LEDX cabinets interlock directly around the corners, allowing pixel-for-pixel alignment across the seam and creating an exceptionally clean transition between surfaces.
“DCBolt was a natural fit for this project, there's not a lot of teams out there that can do something of this scale and with this precision and speed.”
— Ashley Simpson, VP of Design, IQHQ
ENGINEERED FOR EFFICIENCY
The LEDX hardware and NovaStar 5G processing architecture also significantly reduce the infrastructure required to operate the system.
The LEDX cabinets use their magnesium structure as a heat sink, drawing heat away from the 5G data receiver cards without requiring fans inside the cabinets. Each cabinet requires approximately 50 watts, compared with roughly 140–160 watts for previous generations of comparable LED technology. The complete LED system operates at approximately 13,000 watts, while the room requires fewer than four tons of cooling capacity.
The signal architecture was similarly streamlined. The RaDD system represents the first North American deployment of NovaStar 5G processing over copper, allowing a single data cable to serve up to 12 cabinets.
The entire system operates using only 20 5G data cables, which is a fraction of the cabling required compared with the 1:2 cable-to-cabinet architecture common in previous generations.
The result is a high-resolution LED environment with a substantially smaller infrastructure footprint than comparable systems of previous generations, requiring less cabling, labor, points of failure, heat output, cooling load, and power consumption.
BUILT TO EVOLVE
The RaDD Immersion Room was never intended to be a static presentation system. The combination of Imerza's digital twin, custom application, and DCBolt's integrated hardware platform creates an environment that can evolve alongside the development itself.
As RaDD changes, new buildings, milestones, leasing stories, datasets, and visualization experiences can be incorporated without rebuilding the physical system. That flexibility is particularly important for a development with such a diverse group of prospective tenants and stakeholders.
A life science company may want to understand one aspect of the district. A prospective retail tenant may be interested in another. An investor, architect, municipality, or community organization may require an entirely different perspective.
The same physical environment can support each conversation.
“Although we designed this for the now, we're really excited for the opportunities for the tool to morph with us over time and grow and evolve into the future.”
— Ashley Simpson, VP of Design, IQHQ
Although the Immersion Room was initially conceived as a sales and marketing tool for RaDD, its potential applications are already extending beyond leasing. Even before the public launch of the RaDD Leasing Center, other organizations and municipal groups have approached IQHQ about using the space and technology for their own purposes.
That has opened a larger conversation about the role the system could play as a community-building and visualization platform.
“It's really interesting to see different opportunities for this system outside of just a leasing perspective.”
— Ashley Simpson, VP of Design, IQHQ
And the response from those who have experienced the room internally has reinforced the impact of the experience.
“Everyone is awed, they want to see all the things that it can do...they're amazed at how realistic it feels and how much it brings to life the various aspects of RaDD.”
— Nara Lee, Senior Director of Marketing, IQHQ
KEY STATISTICS
54
MILLION LED PIXELS
513
SQFT OF LED CANVAS
5G
VIDEO PROCESSING
TECH SUMMARY
270° PANORAMIC LED WALL
-
405 sq ft
-
186 LED cabinets
-
1,488 0.9mm COB modules
-
19,840 × 2,160 resolution
-
42.8+ million pixels
-
Pixel-perfect 90° corners
DIGITAL TWIN
-
Photorealistic real-time development model
-
Custom Imerza application
-
iPad control
-
Real-time navigation and visualization
-
Flexible presentation/content architectur
LED VISUALIZATION TABLE
-
12' × 9' (108 sqft)
-
48 LED cabinets
-
384 0.9mm COB modules
-
Integrated digital twin visualization
-
30 physical 3D-printed scale models
LED PROCESSING
-
NovaStar 5G processing
-
First North American deployment of its kind
-
20 total 5G data cables
-
Single processing chassis
