On March 18, every room in The Midway Gallery in San Francisco will be transformed into an experimental venue for Luminary, a new music, art, and technology festival organized by the online and live platform that promotes artists and musicians, Future Fires. The event combines the three disciplines for a comprehensive experience including audiovisual works, photography, and interactive projects by artists, musicians, designers, and architects from around the world. Luminary will house five exhibitions, including "Building, the Future" a photography exhibit in collaboration with design agency Britelite Immersive; and "Nature/Unnature," a virtual reality display by local design community Dream Logic. "There’s an evolving capacity for surfaces, areas, environments to be responsive to the people in those [spaces]," says Clark Suprynowicz, artistic director of Future Fires, in an email to ARCHITECT. "We’re most interested (and excited by) the human element; the way the barrier between 'audience' and 'art,' or 'observer' and 'participant' is becoming more porous."
"Building, the Future" features photographs of sustainable or innovative structures made from nontraditional materials by six design professionals including, Moritz Dörstelmann, a research associate and doctoral candidate at the Institute for Computational Design at Stuttgart University; Güvenç Özel, the technology director of IDEAS, a multidisciplinary research and development platform in UCLA Department of Architecture and Urban Design, and the principal of Ozel Office; Future Cities Lab, an experimental art and design studio based in San Francisco; Gilles Retsin, founder of London-based Gilles Retsin Architecture; Alexandra Neyman, cofounder of San Francisco–based interdisciplinary design and research practice Agglab Laboratoria; and Anna Heringer, principal of Laufen, Germany–based Studio Anna Heringer.
Several artists from Google's Tilt Brush Artist in Residency Program will be demoing their work in "Nature/Unnature," including Turkish visual artist Can Büyükberber, architect and sound designer Yağmur Uyanık, and advertising agency Goodby Silverstein & Partners in collaboration with the Dali Museum of St. Petersburg, Fla.
Below are some projects that will be featured in "Building, the Future" and "Nature/Unnature":
Elytra Filament Pavilion by Achim Menges and Moritz Dörstelmann
Displayed at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 2015, the pavilion explores the intersection between robotic technologies and architectural design. Inspired by the fibrous structure found in the flying beetle's wings, Elytra is made of carbon fibers.
Morphogenesis by Can Büyükberber and Yağmur Uyanık
This 2016 audiovisual virtual reality project shows viewers abstract geometric shapes that continuously morph into new forms.
Bamboo Hostels in China by Anna Heringer
Completed in 2014, the project comprises three bamboo and mud structures—the nightingale, the dragon, and the peacock—that serve as hostels in the village of Baoxi in China.
NASA 3D Printed Habitat in Mars by Güvenç Özel
A runner up for NASA's 2015 3D Printed Habitat Challenge Design Competition, this conceptual project proposed the use of a basalt (a volcanic rock found on the Martian landscape) composite to create concrete-like shells for building construction.
Dreams of Dali by the Dali Museum of St. Petersburg, Fla., and Goodby Silverstein & Partners
Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dali's 1935 painting Archaeological Reminiscence of Millet’s “Angelus” comes to life in this virtual experience, allowing visitors to walk through one of the bizarre worlds Dali created.
Correction: This story initially reported that Anna Heringer was the founder of Anna Heringer Architects, when she is in fact the principal of Studio Anna Heringer.
This story has been updated.
