UP Projects and The Architecture Foundation has announced Duggan Morris Architects as winner of the Open Architecture Challenge to design the next phase of the acclaimed Floating Cinema project. This project has been commissioned by the Legacy List with corporate partner Bloomberg as part of the Bloomberg East series of artist-led programs to animate the waterways in East London working in partnership with the Canal and River Trust.
Continue after the break to learn more.
The London-based practice developed their proposal “A Strange Cargo of Extra-Ordinary Objects” in partnership with Skelly & Couch, Services Engineers; Appleyard and Trew, Quantity Surveyors; Price & Myers, Structural Engineers; and MSO Marine, Boatyard and Marine Services to produce a robust and practical, as well as highly inventive and imaginative, response to the brief.
Duggan Morris Architects Director Joe Morris stated: “Duggan Morris Architects is proud to have been selected for this prestigious project. The Floating Cinema has the potential to be a wondrous addition to London’s network of canals and waterways. As such we very much look forward to delivering this unique structure and creating a legacy for generations of visitors to the Lea Valley.”
Building on the resounding success of the pilot Floating Cinema 2011 project, designed by Studio Weave, UP Projects are continuing to work with film-maker artist duo Somewhere (Nina Pope and Karen Guthrie), who will be devising an “Extra-Ordinary” program of on-board screenings, quirky canal tours, talks and workshops for the new Floating Cinema, which will launch in June 2013. The artists and project team felt that Duggan Morris’s proposal offered design solutions that embody the new 2013 program theme of ‘Extra-Ordinary’, offering delight and playfulness as well as being robust and serviceable for a permanent lifespan on the water.
The Floating Cinema is part of UP Projects’ ongoing Portavilion program; a series of temporary pavilions for London’s parks and public spaces that have brought high quality sculptures and cultural events to a broad public audience since 2008. The new Floating Cinema is supported by the Legacy List and Bloomberg and will form an important strand of the cultural program that supports the legacy of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. UP Projects partnered with The Architecture Foundation to produce the architecture competition to select the design team for the new Floating Cinema.
Duggan Morris Architects’ winning proposal was selected from a shortlist of four international practices including OBRA (New York/Beijing) Nilsson Pflugfelder (London/Berlin) and vPPR (London) by a panel of seven judges including Lady Patty Hopkins (Hopkins Architects), Sarah Weir OBE (Legacy List), Sarah Ichioka (Architecture Foundation), Nina Pope (Somewhere), Karen Guthrie (Somewhere) and Emma Underhill (UP Projects).
Reference: UP Projects
