Foamspace is the winning project of the 2015 Street Architecture Prize Competition hosted by Storefront for Art and Architecture and the New Museum as part of the biennial IDEAS CITY festival. The brainchild of SecondMedia, this mobile work of architecture and digital platform of financial tools will allow members to propose and vote on the next iterations.
We had a chance to speak to Ryan King, who cofounded SecondMedia with Ekaterina Zavyalova, Nikolay Martynov and Betty Fan.
Architizer: Let’s start with the concept and materials — what is Foamspace about?
Ryan King: Foamspace begins as a work of temporary architecture on the streets of New York for the Ideas City Festival. The installation is made of geofoam blocks and is designed to mobilize and store the value generated during the festival while organizing a community of architects.
This is done through Foamspace Coin, a token of membership for the community, that runs on the Bitcoin blockchain. Proposals and Funding for Future Projects occur amongst the community on the decentralized blockchain. The Installation materials are resold after the festival to create a community fund for the next projects that will be managed on the blockchain.
Foamspace seeks to make visible the material and logistics of the city of not only today but tomorrow as well.
The scale and material of the blocks have not been altered or designed in any way by the Foamspace team. The installation uses the product manufacture standard size for the blocks, which are being delivered from the factory on the day of the festival. Each block weighs 100 pounds and is eight feet tall with a base of three feet by four feet.
Because Foamspace is introducing terms and ideas from Cryptocurrency and Bitcoin, such as the blockchain, the installation also works as a visual metaphor of the blockchain for visitors who want to engage and learn about the digital aspect of the project.
Further, Foamspace is building material that is embodied capital. Undamaged blocks will be sold on the secondary-use market to the supplier to create a fund for the community to use for a future project. The unaltered “building block” is emphasizing the metaphor of free circulation of physical matter on the emerging market for reused materials.
How did the idea for Foamspace come about? Was it conceived as a response to the Street Architecture brief, or had you been thinking on it for some time?
We have been thinking about the relationship between architecture, finance and emerging technologies that allow material transactions to be recorded on the blockchain for some time. However, the idea for Foamspace was a direct response to the Street Architecture Brief.
The theme for this year’s IDEAS City Festival is the invisible city and the material we chose to use for our installation is omnipresent yet invisible in our everyday lives, EPS Geofoam. Foamspace seeks to bring this material to the surface and make visible the material and logistics of the city of not only today, but tomorrow as well. Building on the festival’s previous theme, “Untapped Capital,” we sought to view our project as material that is now visible and capital that is being tapped.
More specifically, the Street Architecture brief called for a “mobile work of architecture.” We imagined a means to capture and store the value from the festival — in the form of a coin — and mobilize this to another site with a yet to be determined project. Instead of having our Foam blocks move to another site, they are sold to start a fund. What then becomes mobile is not the Form of the Architecture but the activity of the community members.
What exactly will happen to the blocks after the IDEAS City Festival?
After the festival, the blocks will be loaded into trucks at the end of the festival and resold to the manufacturer.
Many projects in the cryptocurrency sphere launch their project with a “Block Sale.” In those cases Block Sale refers to the initial coins mined or sold on the block chain. Because our project is about architecture, material, and space, we will launch Foamspace with an actual Block Sale.
Does Foamspace have any other projects on the horizon? What can the community expect from their investment?
The community can expect to immediately participate in the discussion about future Foamspace projects. Any holder of FoamspaceCoin will then automatically receive ‘Propose’ and ‘Vote’ tokens after the Festival. These will allow members to propose and vote on the evolution of the project.
From the investment users make by signing up for this community returns will be a new paradigm of self-initiated and funded projects.
On the horizon, the community can expect a full fledged platform and ecosystem for consensus driven architecture built on blockchain technology.
“Foamspace” will be on view this Saturday, May 30, on the Bowery between Stanton and Rivington Streets as part of the New Museum’s IDEAS CITY Festival. See more details at foam.space