PEARL STREET PASSAGE
BOOM [BOX]
installation, designphilly 2015
In partnership with Bohlin Cywinski Jackson Architects and Worldtown SoundSystem.
For our concept, we looked to create an interactive urban experience that changes as visitors assemble and disassemble the modular objects contained within a larger framework. During the day, these easily manipulated objects can be removed and used to create street furniture. The objects also contain original artwork, allowing users to also create larger murals. Finally, at dusk, the objects are returned to the framework where the fully assembled piece creates individual spaces and a backdrop for the musicians that perform at our site in the evening.
Dubbed the ‘Boom [BOX],’ the installation became the social and energetic hub of the festival with community members describing the construction as an innovative transformation in the neighborhood as well as noting its potential for future use. We believe the installation exhibits the shifting potential of site-responsive collaborative design and creative community place-making.
We believe that the role of art and architecture is fundamentally about the nature of people, how we see, how we hear, how we touch, how we experience the world around us. We imagine a dynamic structure for the Pearl Street site that engages the senses, shifting our experience throughout the day and into the evening. Through audio, visual, material and structural means, the site may shift from street furniture to performance space, from a space of repose to one of action, shifting one's role from observer to actor, and back again. Throughout the day these shifts will occur primarily in use or in form, but as the sun sets the site will undergo its most dramatic shift as the structure transforms into a space of projection, engaging users in an ephemerally shifting space of movement and music. Live musical performances, djs, art projection, dancing, in a dynamic space that encourages observation, contemplation and participation.
October 2015: Design, fabrication + installation at DesignPhilly's Pearl Street Passage
Some photos and project description: Bohlin Cywinski Jackson Architects