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Mobile Orchard
Mobile Orchard
City of London, United Kingdom
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Mobile Orchard
City of London, United Kingdom
Firm
YEAR
2013
SIZE
0 sqft - 1000 sqft
BUDGET
$10K - 50K
Photos
Summary
The Mobile Orchard is an inhabitable public art installation by atmos.
It's a hymn to the urban fruit tree - a celebration of the 2013 theme set by its commissioners, the City of London Festival.
Its exuberant design mutates the wonder of natural trees with a structure ergonomically tailored to humans, offering a labyrinth of complex and inviting spaces that seek to nourish all the senses - celebrating both the formal structures of nature, and the social structures of cities.
It previewed in Paternoster Square before commencing a weekly journey that stopped at Devonshire Square, the Gherkin, and Finsbury Avenue Square.
___
The Cast
The Mobile Orchard centres on a sculptural timber oasis that doubles as immersive summer street furniture - morphing into seating, shelter, stairway and sky-throne. Its undulating roots offer a landscape for lounging, including sinuous benches and a molten armchair that cradle the gaze upwards through the hollow trunk.
Massive branches worm outwards from a dramatically leaning trunk to offer further seats, splaying to form steps that spiral upwards around the undulating trunk to a throne at the tip.
A lightweight latticework of curved and folded aluminium unfurls from the laminated plywood grains to support a canopy of lasercut leaves - each blade waste-lessly cut in the shape of a local London borough, with the host borough further subdivided into wards - the blossom and seeds of the project.
The branches cradles a constellation of Braeburn apples, refreshed as quickly as the local City workers can pluck and eat them.
The trunk houses a miniature processor that illuminates its bark with glowing Xylem, waterproof LED veins uniting sky and soil, their sinuous lines graphically delineating the segments of the tree's core geometry, each terminating in a glowing spot of LED moon-light.
The man-made tree was donated to Trees for Cities, who plan to tour it across Britain for 5 years, while its attendant choir of young fruit trees have been donated to the City's first orchard, and to a host of other local London schools to start their own orchards.
Overview
The design of the Mobile Orchard furthers atmos's ongoing investigations of natural forms, organic structures, experiential ergonomics, digital fabrication, and innovative public landscapes. It was parametrically designed using scripts and algorithms that explore the mathematical rules of growth so brilliantly exemplified by nature, enabling an unprecedented level of highly-resolved complexity.
In homage to the surfaces of its modernist host borough, the design originally proposed lightweight interlocking lasercut steel sheets, using curved folds to economically achieve large spans. The evolution on towards a plywood solution developed for reasons of both cost and comfort, offering a warmer and more welcoming series of surfaces for the public to enjoy; the design of the secondary branches retains the only trace of the original curved-fold sheet metal design.
Though natural in form, the project is centrally about people and interaction, collectivity - and cities. Its forms ape humans, moulded to their bodies, mirroring their movements. Its branches offer its visitors food, and hosted a range of eating events - a core interest of the studio, whose director created Latitudinal Cuisine and Global Feast for the Olympics, merging design with fine-dining in the aspiration to stimulate both mind and body.
The Mobile Orchard is intended to challenge and inspire, to a offer a background that becomes a prop for the actor and player in all of us, and to encourage exploration and interaction.
The Mobile Orchard is an inhabitable public art installation by atmos.
It's a hymn to the urban fruit tree - a celebration of the 2013 theme set by its commissioners, the City of London Festival.
Its exuberant design mutates the wonder of natural trees with a structure ergonomically tailored to humans, offering a labyrinth of complex and inviting spaces that seek to nourish all the senses - celebrating both the formal structures of nature, and the social structures of cities.
It previewed in Paternoster Square before commencing a weekly journey that stopped at Devonshire Square, the Gherkin, and Finsbury Avenue Square.
___
The Cast
The Mobile Orchard centres on a sculptural timber oasis that doubles as immersive summer street furniture - morphing into seating, shelter, stairway and sky-throne. Its undulating roots offer a landscape for lounging, including sinuous benches and a molten armchair that cradle the gaze upwards through the hollow trunk.
Massive branches worm outwards from a dramatically leaning trunk to offer further seats, splaying to form steps that spiral upwards around the undulating trunk to a throne at the tip.
A lightweight latticework of curved and folded aluminium unfurls from the laminated plywood grains to support a canopy of lasercut leaves - each blade waste-lessly cut in the shape of a local London borough, with the host borough further subdivided into wards - the blossom and seeds of the project.
The branches cradles a constellation of Braeburn apples, refreshed as quickly as the local City workers can pluck and eat them.
The trunk houses a miniature processor that illuminates its bark with glowing Xylem, waterproof LED veins uniting sky and soil, their sinuous lines graphically delineating the segments of the tree's core geometry, each terminating in a glowing spot of LED moon-light.
The man-made tree was donated to Trees for Cities, who plan to tour it across Britain for 5 years, while its attendant choir of young fruit trees have been donated to the City's first orchard, and to a host of other local London schools to start their own orchards.
Overview
The design of the Mobile Orchard furthers atmos's ongoing investigations of natural forms, organic structures, experiential ergonomics, digital fabrication, and innovative public landscapes. It was parametrically designed using scripts and algorithms that explore the mathematical rules of growth so brilliantly exemplified by nature, enabling an unprecedented level of highly-resolved complexity.
In homage to the surfaces of its modernist host borough, the design originally proposed lightweight interlocking lasercut steel sheets, using curved folds to economically achieve large spans. The evolution on towards a plywood solution developed for reasons of both cost and comfort, offering a warmer and more welcoming series of surfaces for the public to enjoy; the design of the secondary branches retains the only trace of the original curved-fold sheet metal design.
Though natural in form, the project is centrally about people and interaction, collectivity - and cities. Its forms ape humans, moulded to their bodies, mirroring their movements. Its branches offer its visitors food, and hosted a range of eating events - a core interest of the studio, whose director created Latitudinal Cuisine and Global Feast for the Olympics, merging design with fine-dining in the aspiration to stimulate both mind and body.
The Mobile Orchard is intended to challenge and inspire, to a offer a background that becomes a prop for the actor and player in all of us, and to encourage exploration and interaction.
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