“OUTER SPACE” # 1 – The Arsenale. Astroballon 1969 Revisited Feed Back Space by Coop Himmelb(L)au (Vienna). Enter into the giant, inflatable and transparent “brain”, grab hold of the handles, and see your own heartbeat come into view on giant screens above your head, while your blood pressure swirls on LED screens. The amplified sound that seems to emanate from your body fills the space around you. If you concentrate hard enough, you can change these rhythms and perhaps entrain the biology of the spectators around you. Based on an experiment Coop Himmelb(L)au imagined in 1969 but was unable to realize with the then available technology, the “Feedback Space” is meant as a prototype for a room that has no clear boundaries, and in which technology allows us to change our environment. The architectural object becomes a way of communicating directly from body to body. In the end, as the architects say, “The city beats like a heart.” “Our architecture has no physical ground plan, but a psychic one,” they continue, “Walls no longer exist. Our spaces are pulsating balloons. Our heartbeat becomes space, our face is the façade.”Friday, September 19, 2008
VENICE: 11th Biennale of Architecture: OUT THERE: ARCHITECTURE BEYOND BUILDING
“OUTER SPACE” # 1 – The Arsenale. Astroballon 1969 Revisited Feed Back Space by Coop Himmelb(L)au (Vienna). Enter into the giant, inflatable and transparent “brain”, grab hold of the handles, and see your own heartbeat come into view on giant screens above your head, while your blood pressure swirls on LED screens. The amplified sound that seems to emanate from your body fills the space around you. If you concentrate hard enough, you can change these rhythms and perhaps entrain the biology of the spectators around you. Based on an experiment Coop Himmelb(L)au imagined in 1969 but was unable to realize with the then available technology, the “Feedback Space” is meant as a prototype for a room that has no clear boundaries, and in which technology allows us to change our environment. The architectural object becomes a way of communicating directly from body to body. In the end, as the architects say, “The city beats like a heart.” “Our architecture has no physical ground plan, but a psychic one,” they continue, “Walls no longer exist. Our spaces are pulsating balloons. Our heartbeat becomes space, our face is the façade.”