Open-air Interactive Exhibit at the Materials and Application Gallery

Bubbles is an adaptable spatial pneumatic installation at an urban scale. The installation will consist of large pneumatic volumes that inflate and deflate in reaction to the visitors coming to the site. If unoccupied the volume of the site is slowly filled by the spatially distributed sacks creating a translucent bubble translucent infill. If approached the section the visitor is closest to deflates offering a pathway into the installation. More activity opens up the space more making it navigable. A ramp allows visitors to move up into the space and be completely surrounded by bubbles, and also serves as an observation platform for the interior space below during lectures and gatherings.

The installation aims at bringing the sense of an adapting volumetric sense of architecture to the installations site that is compelling for its ever-changing form and response to visitors. The changes suggest a life like yet somewhat mechanistic space creature occupying the space. The installation tackles volume over surface, interaction with space over static geometry and pushes the scale of interactive architecture.Ideologically, the installation builds upon the legacy of the late-sixties counter-cultural "immaterial" architecture and art installations of the Utopie group, who were inspired in their time by Guy Debord and the Situationists. Now the technology of our times has caught up with the goals of this airy socio-political revolution.

Specifically, as the occupants enter and move through the installation, they bump the bubbles ranging from 6' to 8' in diameter that fill the lower layer of the space. Sensors in the bubbles cause a fan in the manifold to transfer air to the bubble directly above. Single manifolds connect pairs of bubbles.

Design Team:
Michael Fox, Scott Franklin, Axel Kilian, Miao Miao, Juintow Lin
Additional Support:
Andrew Todd, Miles Kemp, Rolando Mendoza, Gabriele Renz