DELIGHTOSCOPE
P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center
Drawing inspiration from Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights, random fields of wildflowers, and the enclosing comfort of a tree canopy – we proposed installing a vibrant and lush foliate of continuous shade meandering throughout the main courtyard. Different fields of color provide for different moods for being in the garden, as the pigmented shadows alter the gravel gray of the existing court. An orchard comprised of reflective trees occupies a square side court, considered specifically for those who wish to broil under the sun’s rays; a dripping cave off the dance floor cools; communal pools and lounge seating are located within the garden’s fallen fruit.
Petals were prototyped in various specifications of agricultural shade cloth – a recyclable, UV fast, lightweight and economical fabric designed specifically as an exterior shading device. Purposed to provide optimal and controlled environments for growing plants in the absence of pesticides, both wind and water pass through it easily. It’s knitted structure gives this fabric incredible tensile strength and allows it to be left unseamed.
To achieve the complex, undulating surface, Matter proposed a strategy of simple mass production techniques and assembly specifically tolerating natural material behaviour, irregularity, and imprecision – just as nature itself is inevitably flawed. The pattern for the petals is a simple circle, gathered and pulled taught. Light and shadow created by each petal's irregular edge produced a luxurious and ever shifting field of pressed flowers, rendered differently throughout the day with the changing angle of the sun. To support such a large and continuous canopy without impeding the swarm of an enthusiastic crowd of thousands, we adopted the possibly counterintuitive strategy of deploying many columns of small diameter.
We took this project as a challenge to design an elegant, lightweight, easily deployable structure within the parameters of the competition's stringent budget and tight timeframe.
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