Category: Special Categories
Design Award
Jury Citation:
“The judges enjoy the delightfulness and joyfulness this project brings. The interactive approach to design, its inventiveness, use of interesting materials and its public engagement is praise-worthy. The designers are commended for the experimental and explorative process, testing materials and fabrication techniques and demonstrating new possibilities of how we can better design and build in the future.
For their creative spirit and risk-taking boldness, and for bringing newness and showing us opportunities in the future of Architecture, the jury panel presents this fun project with a Design Award.”
rhizome house is an interactive light installation and spatial prototype created for the amsterdam light festival. responding to the theme of biomimicry, the installation is manifested as a computationally designed and fabricated network of rhizomes, or fungus roots, that through light and space invites, encourages, and prompts users to interact and engage with both it and each other.
conceptually rhizome house responds to biomimicry by illustrating the typologies of animal construction: house, trap, display. the “house”, a steel wireframe of typical dutch canal home. within these houses is “trapped” a network of translucent HDPE rhizomes. the rhizomes are then illuminated through linear LED strings into a series of “displays”.
the design investigates how objects can become a prompt for social interaction through multiple juxtapositions. the layering of something
new (rhizomes) versus familiar (dutch canal houses)
cool (white light) versus vibrant (rainbow spectrum)
calm (static light) versus exciting (colour changes)
allows the installation provide something for everyone, kids to grandparents, and perpetually draws them closer.
the allure rhizome house is in part due to its unique spatial quality, realized through computational design and digital fabrication. a series of algorithms were developed, mimicking the natural growth process of rhizome networks, to create a dynamic spatial quality. enclosed, as well as porous, the 1357 unique strips combine to generate various nodes within rhizome house that collectively provide a diverse array of “stages” for all types of activity, depending on how the user chooses to engage. a series of light sequences make rhizomes come alive, transitioning from a “resting” cool white light, slowly ramping up to a spectacular rainbow colour change, only to rest again.
rhizome house, through its juxtaposition of elements, draws people into its network, and seeks to foster and encourage interaction of all those affected.
