Exhibition: Space Beyond — Speculative Works by Clouds AO

CRS (Center for Remembering & Sharing) is delighted to announce an exhibition of designs by Clouds AO, the award-winning designers of our new third-floor facilities. Their design for our White Room was recently named one of “nine yoga studios that achieve design nirvana” by HOMESTOLOVE magazine. The two-part, floor-to-ceiling installation in this exhibition is intended to expand the window-less lobby space of CRS and create a vision of “Space Beyond” where speculative concepts are presented in architectural scale, integrated into the underlying structure of the space. The exhibition opens Dec 23, 2015 and runs through January 31, 2016. An Opening Reception with Clouds AO architects Masayuki Sono and Ostap Rudakevych will be held on January 23, 2016.

Cloud Skippers (North wall):
Imagine a community of adventurous pioneers who leave the Earth’s surface to drift and glide amongst the clouds in machine-like dwellings. By employing large wings, Cloud Skippers hitch the constant winds of the jet stream, lifting entire communities to the clouds. Cloud Skippers glean the bounties of the Earth’s atmosphere, employing electricity-generating wind turbines along with large funnels for the collection rainwater.

Five Twenty Minus Five (South wall):
After fifty years in operation and retiring from its service, we propose the 520 floating bridge located in Lake Washington in Seattle to be submerged five centimeters below water to transform it to subsurface pedestrian walkway, next to its newly built traffic bridge. By enabling visitors to appear to be mysteriously treading on water, the old 520 creates a unique experience that questions our relationship & create intimate collisions with nature.

Clouds AO Artist Statement
Architecture has become a discipline obsessed with form making. Our explorations focus on the potential of the immaterial. We are interested in the experiential qualities of architecture, ways in which form and material can elicit lasting emotional or cognitive revelation. To achieve such an architecture requires careful attention to the unique parameters of each project. Research and analysis are distilled, with relevant facts materialized. Our goal is to create conditions that allow for a resonant experience by the synthesis of ideas through design.

Clouds AO Profile
Clouds Architecture Office has produced a number of built and speculative projects distilled from research and analysis that explores the intersection between conceptual and experiential approaches to the built environment. Their work includes the publication of ‘Third Sphere,’ an article describing a suspended city based on the principle of the space elevator (Kerb Journal, 2012) and ‘Comet Runner‘ which envisioned harnessing a comet for interplanetary exploration (Dezeen, 2015). In 2014, they were nominated for the Iakov Chernikhov Prize, and in 2015 Clouds AO received the American Institute of Architects New York Chapter Honor Award, and First Prize in NASA’s Centennial Challenges: 3-D Printed Habitat for Mars.