CELENE LEHRER & LAUREN RATH - Pop-Up Display Space

interior view of model

looking up at ceiling

section - position 1

section - position 2

plan - position 1

plan - position 2

rendering looking in from street

interior rendering

The project is intended as a pop-up venue for product launch events for a prominent vodka brand.  The facade of the building “comes alive” and assumes changing postures and poses.  The interior environment takes on a strange fluidity that absorbs and dislocates inhabitants from the outside environment as an immersive brand experience.   The continuous undulating motion and tremulous specular effects allure passersby and draw them inside the building.  

Strands of fixed-length ball chain are suspended to create a moving architectural installation that transforms from diaphanous wall to awning.  The chains are threaded between fixed overhead tracks and automated jointed tracks that contort to change the form of the interior environment and its relationship to the street.  

The volumes created by the ball-chain are interlaced to create a “marching band” effect as the strands move past each other; they sometimes appear conjoined and at times seem discrete.  The forms convey a sense of overhead crowdedness, as their pressing, intertwined bodies consume one another and change the nature of the space below.  The interior ceiling volume is designed to dip downwards and compose circulation patterns by impeding movement in certain areas, creating eddied areas of repose.  

The bottles are arrayed along the back wall, backlit to emphasize their iconic silhouette.  The changing form and figure of the façade obscures and reveals the product.  The bottles seem to constantly come in and out of focus, drawing attention to the brand identity.