Cellular Paradise
The intent of our garden is exploring the symbols of Paradise white infusing the idea of emergence in landscape by applying the virtues of its inherent complexities: exposing the cellular forms and tectonics of biological morphology. The garden and its surrogate research attempt to do an analogous reading between emergence in landscape and the occupation of gigantic microscopic biological systems via an appropriation of inflatable structures.
The issues of our time cal) for a renewed excitement about the joys of lightness, temporality, mobility, precision and efficiency of landscape. Agence Atypical's Cellular Paradise transforms the environment of the existing forest setting using an absolute economy of physical material: less material deployed means less mass transported to the site; less material discarded at the end of the summer, and a minimum of resources consumed in the processes of manufacturing, fabrication and removal.
Beginning with the ideal of a clouds from previous international installations (see portfolio), the lightest and most economical source of summer shade, Atypical will appropriate theories of low pressure-high volume air structures as a medium to inflate and suspend diaphanous volumes of ultra-lightweight transparent vinyl over a selected forest or field site.
As with all true cellular structures, their ability to self-support and also transfigure and transform are essential 3-dimensional properties that allow for physical occupation and self-organization. The strategic placement of solids and voids (open to atmospheric conditions of moisture, heat and vegetation) will create a simultaneous formalized biologic paradise and tonal microclimates for shade, sun, humidity and dryness. With its non-repetitive ceiling patterns, the resultant overlapping shadows animate the surfaces of the forest floor providing respite from the sun on a hot day white apertures in the centers of the translucent cells act like gaps in passing clouds while framing views of the sky and forest
canopy above.
Cellular Paradise CP will be prefabricated offsite and installed in a chosen site with modifications (transmutations and transfigurations) attached, overlapped and infused into the basic cellular network. In its entirety, the material and equipment necessary for the installation will weigh less than one ton and amount to a single load on a pickup truck. In a departure from the typical fixed and immobile garden, the project is designed to be easily redeployable, and will have a life beyond the approaching summer in other venues, parks, schools and municipal landscapes.
(Competitor's text)
