New York-based architecture firm Leong Leong has created an installation for the third annual Sight Unseen OFFSITE exhibition as a part of the citywide NYCxDESIGN festival.
Titled TOPO, the installation was a scaleless environment composed of more than one thousand foam rollers. Collectively, they form a landscape “that is both an intimate sanctuary and an expansive horizon.” The installation was situated in a room of mirrors, giving the effect that it extends indefinitely.
"TOPO explores the experience of driving and the interior of a car as seamlessly merging into the environment, dissolving distinctions interior/exterior, open/closed and figure/field," Leong Leong told ArchDaily.
Designed in collaboration with ARUP, the exhibition also transforms the acoustic depth of the space through acoustic actuators that are scattered throughout the design, acting as an "interactive sound bath which creates a constantly changing field of sound," according to Leong. "The mood of the space can transform radically because the sound is constantly changing. You can lay, sit, roll, have a seance…whatever."
Architecture and automotive design have a long history together,” said Dominic Leong, partner at Leong Leong in a press release. “Beginning with the Italian Futurists’ fascination with the new perceptions of space and time enabled by the speed of the automobile to Le Corbusier’s infatuation with the engineered efficiency of the automobile — we are now seeing architecture and automotive design’s common interest in not just form and functionality, but in how we interface and relate to our environments. TOPO explores the experience of driving by dissolving the distinction between inside and outside, creating the perception of multiple environments within a single immersive space."
