Entry for AIDS Memorial Park Competition

Three monumental stone walls traverse the perimeter of the site, with chamfered corners enticing curious exploration of the inner park. They divide into 30 monolithic panels perforated by an array of rectangular voids representing the number of AIDS victims lost each year, sequentially through its 30-year history. The walls are thus a readable map, a record, and an evocative signifier of the trace of AIDS through time. A continuous, rising walkway of stairs and ramps cantilevered from the inner surface of the walls draw visitors along this timeline from the ground to the sky, through space and memory. With each step, new sight of the adjacent park space reveals it as a secret sanctuary, pixelated by flourishing trees, benches, glass lights, and other moments of repose around which the public gathers to relax and enjoy life living and life remembered. Peering outward through the punctured walls, visitors view St. Vincent’s, the West Village, and the city, framed through the stark representations of loved ones lost, like windows through a collective soul materialized, looking back at the living world beyond.

Nearing the walk’s end, visitors anticipate the reveal, the catharsis of conclusion signified by some unforeseen yet awaited event. Betrayed by this hope, the end of the journey is not end at all, but a simple moment of suspension in air on a projecting platform to nowhere; a stoppage of time to look back at this cradle of remembrance in a living city. An elevator in the wall then plunges the memorial experience from this brightest height to the depths of the underground exhibition space. Darker and denser, the open basement appears an infinite volume pierced by light from the pixels of glass above in a dramatic chiaroscuro of space. Drifting through the obscurity, visitors view art, ephemera, and further documentation of the AIDS story, absorbing stories indexed to the representations above. Rising back to ground level through another elevator, the journey concludes where it began, to in life in a continuous cycle of pure experience and visceral remembrance.

More detail soon at www.eboarch.com

Competition board for Dunescape
Please visite more detail at www.eboarch.com

Dynamic Performance of Nature is completed.

It is featured on Metropolis, Interior Design, IIDA Perspective and Space magazine.

SoftRigid is moved to EB Office now. SoftRigid will be stayed as our blog.

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Dynamic Perfomance of Nature in Leonardo Museum countdown campaign.
Video by World Famous Inc.

http://www.theleonardo.org/exhibits/discover#2

Beam/cloud/disruption is an installation using laser projection and reflection to create an illuminated, virtual geometric landscape floating inside of a cloud of fog. The main concept is that light is given presence and intensity by the material and spatial medium through which it is transmitted and consequently redefines the material through which it passes. By controlling the trajectory of light projection and situating it within an immaterial medium of atomized mist, an evanescent yet deceptively precise structure of light is created. Through user interaction, the structure of light can be disrupted, oscillated, and reconfigured through human material form.
Geometrically, the projected beams of light resemble a simple triangulated surface that is 3-dimensional in nature, with rises, falls, and aspects, ultimately creating virtual enclosure in addition to geometric form. Technically, the installation is created using an array of vertical metal rods upon which small mirrors are attached at precise angles of incidence and reflection to control the path of the laser. Small laser projectors are also attached to the rods at precise orientations to bounce in infinite path of light through the mirrors which ultimately terminate in the sky and on the ground. A fogging device creates the material through which the laser light passes and is given visual presence. As the rate of fog creation ebbs and flows, the light geometry fades and rightens making the installation visually dynamic and atmospheric.
User interaction occurs when a person, walking through the light and fog, bends the light to the shape of their body, becoming a player in the performance of light. Interaction also takes place when someone touches the vertical rods, causing them to sway and oscillate in such a way that the laser projection is disrupted, creating a sort of signal-to-noise effect of the geometry coming in and out of view. Imagined on the waterfront below Transmitter park, the installation responds to the historic and iconic signal and beam activities of the former WNYC site. Just as the site was once a source of radio, sound, and information projection, our installation will project light and geometry to the audience of the city and the festival.

Finalist, Bring to Light NYC 2011

Dynamic Performance of Nature is a permanent media wall for the Leonardo, science museum of Salt Lake City. It is scheduled to be released for public in October, 2011.

Lighitng test.

Dynamic Performance of Nature is a permanent media wall for the Leonardo, science museum of Salt Lake City. It is scheduled to be released for public in September, 2011.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/softrigid_installation/

LOOM
Architecture, like clothing, can achieve integrity and presence through the weaving of fragmented elements. Like a loom, our project is a system of production and a manifold of fabrication that is simultaneously the end product itself; an end product identified by exception, beauty and fluidity. Emulating designer’s usage of materials in innovative and unexpected ways, our project celebrates and supports designer’s work while standing alone as a beautiful architectural space that bridges the gap between architecture’s rigidity and fashion’s flexibility.
Materially, our design weaves fiber optic light through an array of prismatic translucent surfaces, attempting to blur the material role of softness and hardness in space. Continuity and sharpness is paramount as is a romantic and lyrical backdrop for the display of designer’s clothing. The store is designed to have an elegant, comfortable atmosphere achieved through the use of high technologies such as CNC (Computer Numerical Control) machining, full-color LEDs, fiber optics, and high-quality recycled materials.
At the first glance, visitors encounter swinging colors in a visually fluctuating ceiling. At night, the space is alive with fluid color and during the day the space gleams with white, diffuse opacity. They can see a soft field condition as well as a definitive formal impact in any light. Zooming in, they can experience space through watching it, touching it and moving it. The reversed landscape on the ceiling can produce various display options, without any partition walls such as suspended or mounted display. Fifty-nine (59) triangulated panels generate changeable density and variable height in the space. Through these panels, side-emitting fiber optics are woven with freely hanging movement, the driving colors generated by an LED matrix which is hidden above panels. Not only will this space provide visitors a showroom for fashion products but also facilitate interaction to with them through the lyrical architecture.