Editor's Pick, 2021 BEST OF DESIGN AWARD, The Architect's Newspaper
Year: 2021
Type: Virtual Installation (Built)
Client: Architectural League of New York.
Venue: SpatialWeb in partnership with Beneville Studios.
Project team: Neyran Turan, Ryan Shin.
Sound Design: Evan Zierk.
A table with a model and some objects. A model of five rooms. A big room surrounded by four other rooms. Shallow stage sets posed as deep rooms. Fake perspectives read against their original depths. A trumpet accidentally dropped in a bathtub. A giant Earth on the kitchen table. A disco ball popping up in the bedroom. An outdoor space on a table.
Designed as a virtual party space for the Architectural League of New York's annual Beaux-Arts Ball, the project is composed of a semi-open central space surrounded by four rooms. While the perspectival views to these adjacent rooms give a comforting sense of depth, in closer inspection the central space reveals their visual infidelity and shallowness. As a reflection on the conflation of domesticity and publicity of everyday life due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Beaux-Arts Ball spills slowly into the space of the home.
Diverse bodies are alone and remote but at an intimate party on a table together.