Loose Affiliates – Picnurbia
Amplasament / Location: Vancouver, Canada An / Year: 2011 Client / Client: orașul Vancouver / City of Vancouver Echipa de proiectare / Project Team: Olena Chyntra, Philipp Dittus, Alana Green, Katy Young Ingineri de structură / Structural Engineers: Fast + Epp Fotografii / Photos: Krista Jahnke
Vancouver is a city edged by beautiful beaches and when the sun finally shines on this normally rainy city, the beaches become crowded with people. The result of this summertime exodus is an urban centre that is often lacking exciting places for people to hang out.
Last Summer, the Loose Affiliates, a Vancouver based design collective, took inspiration from these edge conditions in an effort to attract people to the centre of the city. Their installation, Picnurbia, was installed in central Robson Square as an inland zone for people to gather, picnic and relax. The pop-up amenity became a new node within the city where people would drop by on purpose to meet and visit with friends, or stumble upon more informally as they transversed the city.
The 4 m x 30 m undulating structure was covered in bright orange artificial turf and dappled with beach umbrellas and wooden benches/tables. The project soon became known around the city as “Vancouver’s artificial beach”. In a city that is obsessed with the natural, and in a province that deems itself ‘super-natural’, an installation that embraces the artificial was a novelty.
The softness of the turf and the wave-like design attracted visitors to touch, play and lay upon the landscape. People would often approach Picnurbia first to touch the turf, and then, upon feeling the thickness and softness of the landscape they would enter the wave to sit or lay upon it. Other activities observed on the wave included posing for photo’s, eating lunch or a snack, meeting and talking to strangers, flirting with random wave dwellers, reading a book, running over the waves, sunbathing, and even practicing gymnastics.
The designers, the Loose Affiliates, are a Vancouver-based design collective with architecture degrees working in the urban realm. For more information about this new collective visit www.looseaffiliates.com. The Loose Affiliates partnered with the City of Vancouver and the Viva Vancouver program for the temporary installation of Picnurbia. Viva Vancouver is a new City of Vancouver program with the mandate to transform roads into public spaces, creating a more vibrant street culture in neighbourhoods across the city, thereby encouraging sustainable and active transportation by creating interesting spaces for walking and cycling.
Picnurbia will return seasonally to occupy a different location within the City of Vancouver annually.
Leave a Reply
