#LOOSLAB - Designers' Saturday
LOOSLAB. Designers' Saturday, Langenthal. November 2 to 4, 2018
Nominee, Swiss Design Award 2019/20; Category: Spatial Design
For Designers' Saturday 2018, students from the Department of Interior Architecture presented an experiment that explored the interaction between reality and illusion: the #LOOSLAB. The project explored the role of image culture in the construction of contemporary interior spaces and their associated media. Originally modeled after Adolf Loos’ American Bar and its successive iterations, the proposal sought to document and reflect upon the re-samplings and manipulations of the original scheme. #LOOSLAB imposed its own representation of reality, no longer a copy or a simulacrum but rather a ubiquitous instance of its original image, like an experimental framework for critical research on the construction and perception of a visual experience.
For a pavilion that was meant to exist only for three days, the ambiguity between the original (the physical) and the copy (its image/s) was examined through an interior space constructed entirely of fake materials designed to look real in their photographic representation. Specifically, large-scale stickers were used to both represent and distort the finishes of the original bar, and the entire interior, from floor to ceiling, was made out of stickers. This exploration addressed the notions of counterfeit and genuine while analyzing the influence of photography on contemporary interiors.
Ultimately, #LOOSLAB materialized as a speculative protocol:
- Search online for images of the American Bar.
- Merge Loos’ original with its different iterations.
- Sample them to create a new spatial configuration.
- Construct a physical wooden structure serving as an inverted decor.
- Populate the interior with fake materials in the form of stickers: printed, cut, and pasted.
- Reality takes the form of the image.
- Invite visitors to enjoy a cocktail.
- Take a picture.
- Open exclusively for a three-day period.
- Dismantle the project and reassemble it in a different location, whether physical or virtual.
