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Monday, 30 January 2006 | Elif Sungur
Holiday Home by Ben van Berkel and Caroline Bos
The Institute of Contemporary Art is pleased to present a site-specific commissioned installation by renowned architects Ben van Berkel and Caroline Bos in ICA's second-floor galleries on view until March 26, 2006. The technical realization of the visual media is a collaborative effort of UN Studio and Imaginary Forces.
The "Holiday Home" is an experiential installation exploring and quantifying areas in which the holiday home departs from modern design conventions. The orthogonal surfaces of the archetypal house are extruded and skewed creating the sculptural armature within which the dichotomies of home and holiday home are played out. The new architectural shape emulates escapism, the expectation of a holiday as removed from the everyday experiential routine. The interplay of what is real and what is virtual transpires on a number of levels touching on ideas of collective memory and phenomenological perceptions.
The unadorned construction allows attention to be directed towards the spatial configurations of the structure. Visitor movement through the installation activates unexpected views and the multidirectional shadows cast create unpredictable perspectives as they fall onto faceted surfaces. The perception of time is intrinsically interwoven into the project as light conditions subtly modulate referencing different atmospheric qualities; the sense of season and time of day become more abstract as you may find on holiday where time has a different rhythm as it is unbound by the frameworks of contemporary patterns of living and dwelling.
Based in Amsterdam, van Berkel and Bos have realized several internationally acclaimed projects, including the Erasmus Bridge (Rotterdam, 1990-96), the widely publicized Mobius House (Het Gooi, 1993-98), and most recently, the opening of the Mercedes-Benz Museum (Stuttgart, 2006). Their work was also featured in the International Architecture Exhibition of the 2004 Venice Biennale. Van Berkel and Bos's firm, UN Studio, is meant to act as a powerhouse in which architects, graphic designers, stylists, engineers, and other building and creative professionals can collaborate dynamically. Van Berkel, a self-described hyper-modernist, strives to design on the cutting edge while maintaining coherence with the surrounding landscape, and credits the computer for his designs' noted fluidity. Bos, an art historian, serves as in-house critic, all-purpose debunker, and producer of conceptual and theoretical literature.
Founded in 1996, Imaginary Forces (IF) is an entertainment and design agnecy based in Los Angeles and New York. Their award-winning work spans the diverse industries of feature film production and marketing, corporate branding, architecture, commercial advertising, and interactive media. Fusing architecture and media, IF has created branded experiences for BMW, MoMA, Morgan Stanley, Wynn Las Vegas, IBM, and the NFL's Baltimore Ravens. Following the events of September 11, IF, together with colleagues from five architectural firms, formed United Architects?a collaboration that combined architecture, storytelling, and filmmaking to address the social, emotional, national, and international issues involved in the re-design of the World Trade Center site.
Additionally, IF has produced main titles and marketing campaigns for such feature films as Ray, Spider-Man, Seven, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and latest release The Chronicles of Narnia. Blade: Trinity, the third film produced by ImaginaryForces in the Blade series, opened in theatres on December 8, 2004. IF has also created acclaimed commercial campaigns for Nike, Herman Miller, and Smirnoff. IF is comprised of over 70 creative professionals: art directors, designers, writers, animators, editors, producers, and film directors.
For more information, please visit http://www.icaphila.org
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