The Architecture Foundation launches its brand new east end gallery The Yard on 14 July with Hairywood tower, an urban summer house created by exciting new architectural talent 6a and celebrated fashion duo Eley Kishimoto as a public space to challenge public perceptions of what architecture can be.
Marking the first in the Architecture Foundation’s year-long series of installations at The Yard on Old Street, Hairywood is a 6.3 metre high beacon of public space set upon a raised canopied deck, open directly onto the street. The tower, locating the gallery within the area, will create a threshold to the courtyard space beyond, where the public can meet, have lunch and play, whilst itself offering an intimate escape for two.
Merging pattern and architecture, 6a Architects and Eley Kishimoto’s collaboration explores the impact each has on the other to invite questions about architecture, the city, and our relationship with them. The interaction of structure and repetitive shape plays with ideas of defining space and creating place. The plywood tower, laser cut with Eley Kishimoto’s pattern of Rapunzel’s hair and sitting within a space overlaid with landscape print, playfully challenges the possibilities of public space from a new perspective.
A small space at the very top of the tower, lined with printed timber and upholstery, creates a private world opening itself onto the street and its views. Dappled light affects the interior space during the day, while at night the tower is lit from within, glowing like a giant lantern. Protected behind the tower, the printed deck provides a larger public space connected to the adjacent gallery, with fabric-covered benches. The physical qualities of the architecture are transformed by using pattern to vary the light, colour and texture, meeting pragmatic demands of shading on a south facing courtyard, as well as more romantic notions of privacy and enclosure.
Inspired by the 1958 film Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot by Jacques Tati, 6a Architects and Eley Kishimoto have combined architecture and pattern to temporarily transform this small urban site into a directly accessible public space and experience. Tati’s beautiful heroine began every day by opening her hotel bedroom window and gazing out over the beach and sea. This juxtaposition of interior intimacy and public space was created in reality from a single immaculate bay window held high above the beach on a structural wooden tower. Hairywood reinterprets Tati’s romantic image on Old Street; a small domestic beacon offering a new human interaction with the relentless traffic and urban environment.
Hairywood
The Yard, 49 Old Street, London, EC1
14 July – 31 August 2005
Open Tues-Fri 12noon-6pm / Sat 1-4pm
Closed Sundays and Mondays
Admission free
Tube: Old Street, Barbican or Farringdon
Bus: 55 or 243
http://www.architecturefoundation.org.uk/framesets/fp_333.html
