Selective Perceptions
Conceptual “POP-UP” Urban Installation. Winner, Rethinking The Future (RTF) architecture sustainability award 2016. The world’s existing building stock is a great sustainable resource. Existing structures represent a vast amount of embodied energy and historical memory. This proposal seeks to highlight and bring to focus, the value of adapting existing buildings for further use. To that end, “pop-up” installations of contrasting character are proposed for abandoned and underused buildings. The public is invited to view this temporary art installation, and ponder the decaying character of our past and the installed “beauty” of the selective interventions. Conversely, personal conclusions may result in unintended responses. A “circuit” or collection of spaces is imagined, that together allow the visitor to move from one location to the next, the experience is diffuse yet common. Attention is brought to spaces often overlooked and undervalued. The existing urban fabric itself becomes the space for art creation. Each installation is carefully placed in the specified building, disturbance of the existing fabric, whether decaying or stabilized, is minimized, so as to maximize the effect of the foreign object and heighten the contrast. In this way the perception of these abandoned spaces is altered, and seen with greater value.