Two of SMAQ’s projects are featured at the Venice Biennale, 11th International Architecture Exhibition Out There – Architecture Beyond Building curated by Aaron Betsky. The Cosy Chair designed for Droog Desing is on show in the S1NGLETOWN Exhibition curated by Droog and KesselsKramer from September 14th to November 23rd 2008. The project Cumulus for Oslo, Norway is featured in the German Biennale Catalogue “Updating Germany”.
S1NGLETOWN
S1NGLETOWN focuses on the world of contemporary singles. Its relevance is broad, as all of us are likely to belong to this group at some stage in our lives — and likely more than once. In fact, some sources predict that a third of people in developed countries will be living alone by 2026.
S1NGLETOWN is an exhibition that’s also a town, an abstract interpretation of a new kind of urban space. Visitors will be able to walk its streets and interact with its products and citizens, and view their homes.
COSY CHAIR
Cosy Chair replaces the mono-functional wall mounted radiator in form of a piece of comfortable furniture that heats locally right where one might sit and rest for a cup of tea, to read a book or watch TV. The Cosy Chair cuts energy consumption by providing a field of differentiated temperatures and heating right where the warmth is used instead of heating the whole volume of the space equally. It is made of fifty meter bent stainless steel tubing that plug into the regular heating system of a building.
CUMULUS
Cumulus is an urban strategy for Olso, Norway that conceives public spaces as related to the environmental dynamics of northern living. The proposal for a mixed-used development (re)binds the different social spheres, programmes and scales of an existing 70ties development and a new urban centre through a concept of water cycling and seasonal expansion and contraction.
An important local environmental force – rain – collected on roofs and facades of the inserted dwelling towers is stored to reflect light and skies into the apartments; it is partially used in communal laundries and finally released at a social event in nearing winter to flood the public in-between spaces of the development: Congealing it expands the central indoor ice skating ring into an open air skating surface. While this temporal icy plane serves encounters of existing as well as incoming communities, spring will drain the waters to bordering allotment ecologies.
Projects
Cosy Chair
Cumulus
For more information please visit:
11. International Architecture Biennale
S1NGLETOWN
Updating Germany
Droog Design