4Habitats is a transportable, reconfigurable installation of an industrially-produced, everyday material used off the roll to create a space of wandering and wondering. A series of four quadrants, each 4.5m(length) x 4.5m(width) x 4m(height), create a sequence of 160 layers of UVprocess-printed, hung Spunbond (nonwoven resin-based material) shaped by 80 different human profiles. These habitats may be arranged in a number of configurations, designed to adapt to its host venue as it travels to different cities. In Beijing it was in a linear sequence, while in Seoul it will be shown as a square(pinwheel). Repeated layers of Spunbond carve spaces of personal reflection that begin and end with a single human-scaled profile. As one walks through each colorful habitat, this profile multiplies and morphs to demonstrate the range of selves we ‘inhabit’ as solitary and social beings. Each visitor thus completes the experience of these four traveling habitats by activating each void. The first three habitats explore one’s relationship to oneself (One to One), to a higher being (One to Higher Self), and then to a collective (One to Many). The final habitat, One to Infinity, creates a tunnel within the quilt of society where one individually scaled profile may be removed and made by each visitor into an individual pocket-sized cardholder to take with them. Visitors are thus invited to rethink the business cards that define themselves as they go out and rejoin the world at large.
In an era of social media and virtual identities, a sense of solidarity and isolation coexist within us. As visitors photograph themselves in these cocoons of color to upload for their virtual worlds, 4Habitats brings the question of ‘real’ identity back into the physical realm. Just as the spunbond profiles of each habitat evolve, our identities expand and contract. 4Habitats reminds us of what it means to be human in a colorful, ever-widening landscape of selves.
The structure, developed by Imagine Group in collaboration with SuhArchitects, is a metaphor for the random resin fibers that comprise the non-woven material Spunbond. It is a minimum of weight and parts designed to express the lightness of the hung material itself. It is also fully collapsible and transportable. Many thanks to Transsolar’sThomas , Imagine Group’s Ulrich Knaack and Marcel Bilow and Imagine Structure’s HolgerTechen for their creative minds and experience collaborating in our initial research.
The installation is accompanied by an abstract ‘art’ film depicting the production of spunbond, created by Suh Architects and Image Bakery in collaboration with Kolon Corporation. The soundtrack was generously composed by Simon Pyke, Freefarm.
