The world’s first inflatable folly is displayed at the Royal Institute of British Architects in London.
The installation is a 7 meter inflated black sphere punctured by a half-timbered structure. Inside, a stair leads up to a viewing platform, from where the surrounding void is broken by small pinpricks of light.
In a Lonely Place
The experience offered by In a Lonely Place recalls Étienne-Louis Boullées‘s Cenotaph to Newton – a 18th century proposal for a structure in which the viewer was presented with a man-made approximation of the universe. I first heard about Boullée in Peter Greenaway‘s superb movie The Belly of an Architect but i couldn’t find much information about the French visonary architect online. In the installation, the transparent windows form what seem to be constellations. But in fact, they mark out a tourist map of Hollywood stars homes. This plan of Los Angeles takes on a planetary scale.
“In a Lonely Place” was designed by FAT (Fashion Architecture Taste), a London based practice run by Sean Griffiths, Charles Holland and Sam Jacob and famous for works such as the bathroom furniture for two, the Bicycle Surveillance Hut and the Blue House.
Bathroom Sweet
Fat’s exhibition In a Lonely Place is at the Royal Institute of British Architects, London, until May 2, 2006. Preview of the show.
The Blue House
Fat has another show, All You Can Eat, at Stroom Den Haag. It features models of current and recent projects as well as pieces that reflect the studio’s interest in expanding the boundaries of architecural practice through an engagement with issues of taste, meaning and the relationships between buildings, users and the city.