Portfolio > Laneway Canopy: Public Living Space Nuit Blanche 2016

"Laneway Canopy" meets at the intersection of architecture, art and public installation, merging these creative fields as a way of critiquing our relationship to, and management of, the built environment.

Specifically, this installation seeks to show how simple and rapidly deployable architectural interventions in the interstitial zones of the built environment can radically enliven our everyday experience of the city. For the viewer/participant, rather than being an intervention placed in a gallery, a public square, or any other privileged and highly visible area, Laneway Canopies strives to be a seemingly random and impulsive action on the part of an unknown fellow citizen. The participant is then naturally drawn into the novelty of the space, engages it in their own way, and then carries on at their own pace. It is understood to be indeterminately ephemeral, yet not architecturally insignificant.

While this installation was made possible by the sanctioning of Nuit Blanche, the critique and aspiration with this piece is that over-regulation of the built environment typically leaves us to place installations of this nature in more guarded places: galleries, temporary events, parks, squares, etc. To mitigate this, my position is that the average creative citizen should have more autonomy, and be encouraged to engage more readily with the city in this way: actual modification of everyday spaces. The use of simple and cheap materials here furthers this point by making it apparent this can be done with recycled, found, or easily attained building supplies.

The project was manufactured in modules off-site and brought in by moving van. Over the course of the 12 hours, participants were drawn in by the LED's and music playing, and were be able to linger in the space. The project remained intact on site for a month before being disassembled.