Part street furniture, part data visualization, Guto Requena’s “I am” installation in São Paulo invited passers-by to interact with the city and connect with one another. Observers were asked to sit on a bench and take a picture of themselves, while also selecting which of six emotions they were feeling at the time: love, joy, surprise, anger, fear or sadness.
Each emotion was associated with a color through which the photo was filtered before appearing on the main façade of the FIESP Building along Paulista Avenue. The images then faded into a graph to colorfully display the predominant emotions at the moment.
The street furniture was built from recycled tetrapak plates, using parametric design and digital fabrication.
The installation invited observers “to reflect on the emotional landscapes that connect us to one another and to our urban environment,” write the architects. “I am” continues with the studio’s research on memory, interactive technologies and emotions.
Arquinterface
With shared curatorship by SESI-SP and Giselle Beiguelman, Arquinterface engages designers, artists, architects and thinkers in the fields of communication and audiovisual studies to discuss the new links between technology and the urban imaginary, as well as in which way the arts function nowadays, interfacing with architecture and the city itself.