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TEMPORARY LOUNGE
The first project of this series will directly intervene with the existing infrastructure of the Shedhalle. As the Shedhalle is more than just an exhibition space, it seemed necassary to create a situation which would host workshops and discussions as well as offer a space for guests, artists and the team to read, talk or simply relax.
Together with the curator and artist Dan Wilkinson, the concept for a flexible lounge, which invites visitors into the Shedhalle and offers access to the libray and archive, was developed. In his design Dan Wilkinson suggests the model of a flexible leisure space where adaptable structures and mobile elements can be combined as one functioning unit or utilised for group or individual study.
Dan Wilkinson is fascinated with outmoded or redundant modern architectural structures and in the play of scale. His starting point here was research into animal enclosures and kiosks in zoological gardens as an approach to questions of spectacle in architecture and art institutions on the one hand and the possibilties for contexual displacement on the other.
TEMPORARY LOUNGE (2004)
Dan Wilkinson
The dozen or so enclosures, viewing platforms, and kiosks hastily constructed by architect Berthold Lubetkin and Tecton between 1936-37 for Dudley Zoo occupy a unique position at the tail-end of a brief inter-war period when defiantly modern, openly optimistic, socially orientated buildings prioritising leisure, health and pure enjoyment were being built in Britain.
Combining the latest building technology with exhaustive research into patterns of animal movement and behaviour, a process initially developed for the Gorilla House and famous Penguin Pool at London Zoo, the sweeping concrete curves of Dudley’s Bear Pit, Bird House and Penguin Pool utilised formal architectural settings as active spaces of performance and spectacle, in direct contrast to the contrived naturalistic tableaux more commonly applied by other zoos.
Although Lubetkin and Tecton went on to build a number of acclaimed small-scale public housing projects in London and to work on the abortive master plan for an entire New Town at Peterlee, the neglected zoo enclosures, now emptied of their animal tenants and overgrown with weeds, remain the most adventurously playful, and poignant, example of an integrated modernist architectural landscape.
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Dudley´s Bear Pit
Photo by Eliszabeth Frey |
TEMPORARY LOUNGE, step 1 (2004)
Dan Wilkinson (London)
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TEMPORARY LOUNGE
step 1 (2004)
Dan Wilkinson (London) |
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TEMPORARY LOUNGE
step 1 (2004)
Dan Wilkinson (London) |
TEMPORARY LOUNGE, step 2 (2005)
Dan Wilkinson (London)
The existing furniture of the Temporary Lounge; mobile stage-set zoo architecture‚ constructed as the first On the Spot project, has been adapted, and augmented with functionally decorative elements loosely inspired by the industrially organic mass-produced interiors of the atomic age, to create an intimate archive/workspace, a bar and a meeting place.
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TEMPORARY LOUNGE
step 2 (2005)
Dan Wilkinson (London) |
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TEMPORARY LOUNGE
step 2 (2005)
Dan Wilkinson (London) |
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