SWARMS PAVILION
Location: Kwangju, South Korea
Firm: NADAAA, Boston
Team: Nader Tehrani, with Sarah Dunbar and Ryan Murphy
How do you create an urban folly that stands out on a chaotic street-scape? Nader Tehrani responded to Kwangju’s call for such an installation by constructing this dramatic temporary pavilion inspired by the neighbourhood’s messy energy. Propped on five funnel-like legs, the thick framework of steel rods is seemingly arranged at random but is in fact a precise geometric cloud, with openings to accommodate two existing trees.
IMAGINATION PLAYGROUND EXHIBIT
Location: National Building Museum, Washington, D.C.
Firm: Rockwell Group, New York
Team: David Rockwell and Barry Richards, with lab at Rockwell Group
The Rockwell Group’s Imagination Playground has transformed child’s play. The foam blocks, in various mix-and-match shapes, allow for child-directed, open-ended play, their uniform blue ensuring that there is no wrong way to build a slide, a fortress or a robot. Since debuting a few years ago, the concept has been installed in 700 locations. It has had its biggest moment at the Play.Work.Build exhibition (on until 2014 at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C.), which traces the history of interactive architectural toys to the present day. In one section, kids studiously stack small sections into architectural models, and in another they let their imaginations run wild by arranging larger modules into a fun-filled wonderland.
