Spacebuster by Raumlabor Apr 16 2009 (Above: Spacebuster at CSV Cultural Center, Photo Alan Tansey )
View Alan Tansey's photostream documenting evening events in the Spacebuster
Spacebuster is a mobile inflatable structure - a portable, expandable pavilion - that is designed to transform public spaces of all kinds into points for community gathering. A new iteration of a past Raumlabor project, the Küchenmonument (presented in Europe in 2006-8), the Spacebuster will make its first appearance in the US this evening and will travel throughout Manhattan and Brooklyn for 10 consecutive evenings hosting various community events.
The pavilion is comprised of an inflatable bubble-like dome that emerges from a step van that also houses the compressor that keeps the Spacebuster inflated. The dome expands and organically adjusts to its surroundings, be it in a field, a wooded park, or below a highway overpass. The material is a translucent plastic that allows the events taking place inside of the shelter - screenings, lectures, dinners or discussions - to be entirely visible from the outside. Likewise the exterior environments become the events' backdrops.
Each of these ten evenings will be organized in conjunction with a community group, nonprofit organizations, university, or arts organization. Events will include artist talks, film screenings, communal dinners and many other events.
Friday 17 April, 6.30pm
Public Vernissage at Gansevoort Plaza with a talk by Raumlabor (map)
Sunday 19 April, 7pm: Dinner at the Old American Can Factory
Dinner with Raumlabor in the Spacebuster in The Courtyard of The Old American Can Factory, 232 Third Street at Third Ave., Gowanus Brooklyn, hosted by The Eighteenth, a roving restaurant run by artist Anne Apparu (7pm onwards, $27). To book a seat please RSVP to rsvp@storefrontnews.org - limited seating available. Organized in conjunction with MeanRed Productions and XŘ Projects.
Tuesday 21 April, 7.00pm
Presented in conjunction with Goethe Institute New York
Gathering at Wyoming Building, the new events space of the Goethe Institute NY (map) followed by a lecture by Raumlabor and presentation of the Fragmental Museum at Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural Center ( map)
Wednesday 22 April, 7.00pm
Screening and discussion: "Examined Life", organized in conjunction with Gavin Browning/Studio-X/Columbia GSAPP
Followed by open discussion with Astra Taylor, Avital Ronell and Raumlabor (Event booked out)
Thursday 23 April, 7.00pm
Iron Designer, organized in conjunction with Studio-X/Columbia GSAPP and DUMBO Improvement District
Iron Designer is organized by Mitchell Joachim, Ioanna Theocharopoulou and Gavin Browning, Columbia GSAPP, as a continuation of ECOGRAM: The Sustainability Question.
Featuring teams of M.Arch students from Columbia GSAPP, CCNY, Parsons and Pratt, IRON DESIGNER is a real-time, ecologically-oriented and challenge-based happening loosely based on “Iron Chef”.
Location: The Archway in DUMBO (map)
Saturday 25 April
3pm Workshop
4.30pm Sandwiches by raumlaborberlin
5pm Poetry Slam
On Saturday, April 25th 2009, Storefront for Art and Architecture and Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn Partnership will organize a joint community-oriented event to be held in the unused space under the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway along Park Avenue. The focus of this workshop will be on how disused spaces of this kind can be re-imagined as neighborhood assets. During activities facilitated by planners and designers including Raumlabor, workshop attendees will be able to share their thoughts by sketching, through discussions, and by exchanging ideas. The event will be free and open to the public. Location: Park Ave btw Washington Ave and Hall Street (under the BQE), Brooklyn (map)
Sunday 26 April, 8.00pm
Finissage - closing reception and goodbye to Raumlabor (33 Flatbush Ave, Brooklyn)
About Raumlabor
Raumlabor is a group of architects and urban designers based in Berlin, Germany. Raumlabor began working on the issues of contemporary architecture and urbanism in 1999. Working in various interdisciplinary teams they investigate strategies for urban renewal. Raumlabor’s work deals with urban design and planning, architectural design, landscape, buliding interactive environments, research and design of public space and art installations. Their public art installations have been shown in Vienna, Austria, numerous cities in Germany, as well as numerous biennials and exhibition spaces throughout Europe.
Sponsored by:
Goethe Institute New York
Department of Transportation - Urban Arts Initiative
Partner Organizations:
Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural Center
Studio-X/Columbia GSAPP
Meanred Productions
Meatpacking District Initiative
Dumbo Improvement District
MARP LDC / Myrtle Ave Brooklyn BID
ForYourArt
Spacebuster at CSV Cultural Center, Photo Alan Tansey
Spacebusting
From within a hard shell swells the soft bubble, a billowing urban room hatched in the back of a delivery van. This genie in a lamp makes for instant theater, and shows how wind in a bag can make instant architecture. But this is no ordinary pop-up circus tent. Rather than being consumed as entertainment, like a circus act or the dead matter of architecture, Spacebuster consumes its viewers, and they in turn transform it. Touch it, see and be seen through it, drink and debate inside it.
New York is full of invisible walls. The spaces that Spacebuster busts are penned by intangible limits. Space busting is about uncompressing the void, sprouting between the cracks, squeezing the vacuum, enveloping the moment. Ambiguity no longer equates to amnesia. The strange yet banal spectacle of inflation, the making of walls and boundaries, turns out to be an overture to cross those boundaries and infiltrate the volume. Spacebuster mobilizes us to mobilize space.
Enter Spacebuster, the amorphous enigma: A certified building by the Department of Buildings. A licensed vehicle by the Department of Motor Vehicles. A certified street event by the Department of Transportation. An experimental realm-laboratory by Raumlaborberlin. Inhaling inert space, it holds its breath until the space reawakens, if only for a moment. Will the memory last? How will we convert this experience of agile placemaking into everyday practices of urban space busting?
