News Interactive installation, Lateral Loop, designed by Assistant Professor Tiffany Lin
Lateral Loop is an interactive installation designed by Tiffany Lin of LinOldhamOffice. An arched array of bamboo poles and fluorescent black lights will be erected within the Cabildo arcade in Jackson Square to celebrate the Louisiana Cultural Economy Summit in October and the AIA of New Orleans DesCours Festival in December.
Lateral Loop creates a contemporary promenade during the day and an illuminated figure at night. This white sculptural passage is assembled from 176 arced bamboo poles that mark a path from Pirates Alley to the Cabildo museum entry. The floating matrix of arches deviates visually and spatially from the historic arcade, highlighting the laterally looped passage visitors have taken ever since the original arcade was gated for security. As arcades traditionally offer open passage under each side arch, the Cabildo loggia presents a unique condition where visitors can only enter from the center or the flanks, rendering the frontal arches out of use. Lateral Loop is a spatial device that defines and celebrates the side path as an interactive event space. Black lights will be engaged nightly to activate phosphorescent pigments in the white bamboo poles that glow vividly in darkness. This installation is inspired by the festive culture of New Orleans and hopes to create a destination where visitors of Jackson Square can simultaneously be the audience and the spectacle as they walk through the new path and glow with the installation.
This project was fabricated from locally harvested bamboo poles and constructed with the help of Michael Greene, Nels Erickson, and countless other students from the Tulane School of Architecture. The bamboo members were stripped, sorted and cut into 10-foot segments, then individually dipped into an emulsion of white paint and fluorescent agent. The poles were then joined into complimentary arcs with heat-shrink tubing and arranged on-site in the composition of an undulating passageway.
LinOldhamOffice is a progressive and emerging design collaborative established by Tiffany Lin and Mark Oldham. Their practice lies at the intersection of material research and architectural design. The philosophy of exploration and collaboration has lead to work ranging from domestic projects, institutional speculations, catalogs of vernacular architecture and modern translations of historic spaces. Their first project, the 8 Container Farmhouse, was awarded a 2005 Progressive Architecture Citation, and selected by the Architectural League of New York for inclusion in the 2005 Young Architects Forum.
11.01.09
