Dubbeldam Design Architects

pull.push.slide.pivot.lift.tilt.turn is an interactive installation designed in response to the Building Partners exhibition at the Harbourfront Centre Architecture Gallery. The installation explores how an architectural project is a negotiation of the ideas of both the Architect and the Client (User). It demonstrates the effects of the User on the final built product through a framework of changeable elements and spaces conceived by the Architect, that can be manipulated by the User to affect the final spatial, visual and material result. The built installation is a play of moving walls, textured and smooth surfaces, materials that alter acoustics, dark and light-coloured planes that reflect or absorb light, an interactive light wall, and moveable furniture-like elements. Sliding, swivelling, and pivoting planes representing walls can be altered to define rooms with differing spatial qualities.

A large wall pivots to expose a felt-covered room that absorbs sound and appeals to the sense of touch. Another wall rotates to enclose a small space with a hidden parabolic speaker emitting music, and narrow windows allowing views into other spaces. The wall rotates back and one window aligns with a mirror, creating an axis upon which the User can see themselves reflected in the space. A sliding wall activates a backlit plane of light. Felt-covered foam cubes representing furniture elements can be stacked, climbed on, or used for rest. Analogous to the working relationship and dialogue between Client and Architect, every interaction introduces change and impacts the connected spaces, within the framework of the Architect’s design. Each time a visitor enters the installation and interacts with it, they make it their own. The configurations are endless, and the results are often surprising.