And the Tube Collection Continues

Thanks to Mercury Blueprinting in London, we have another 91 tubes bringing the total to 183 carboard tubes! And to add a little variety, the tubes range in length from 24" to 36".

Nuit Blanche, a city wide all-nighter

Nuit Blanche, translating to white night is a sunset to sunrise celebration of contemporary art which attracts a million people to the city streets. The event occurs around the world in cities like Berlin, Paris and Tel Aviv and continues to push the boundaries of art in public space. Torontonians first participated in the event in 2006 and every year since it has drawn hundreds of thousands of curious people out in the middle of the night to be intrigued, inspired and amazed. 

This year, Subject to Change joins in the party. Hope to see you there.

http://www.scotiabanknuitblanche.ca

Spread the word

Moving forward with our advertising, we're working on a marketing and fundraising package to spread the word about our project and look for support. A combination of graphics, text and information about our design collective will help make these packages and advertise the installation. Here is one of the renders we've done to show the atmosphere of our project.

Site ... Locked Down!

For Nuit Blanche, finding the ideal site is almost as important as the concept of the installation itself. After debating numerous times on the typology of site we were hoping for (jumping between alley ways, open courtyards, sheltered spaces) we found a small parking lot that provides us with qualities from all these types of spaces. Located just off Yonge Street, the site is a small back service area to several apartment and commercial buildings on Temperance Street, directly beside Toronto's "Cloud Gardens".

The site provides many opportunities to create flow as well as areas where people can stay and loiter. The layout and plan for the site is still undecided, but it will allow us to shape our project further and design it specifically for our installation space.

Day two of testing TESTtubes

After building in the evening,  we decided the next morning we would try the form again, this time finishing off the upper most layer with the smallest tubes. We left several of the base tubes out over night to see if they could handle the weather and wind, and it proved to stand up quite well. Looking at the friction fit connections, we have discussed making them thinner and less aparent, and possibly using smaller tubes throughout the project to make it thinner and lighter. Lots to experiment with still, but this is the last build we'll have the opportunity to do altogether before heading off on our work terms.

The question that still remains is what will hang or inhabit the open space between the tube branches? Whats the next layer of material or quality that we want to add to our base structure?

Night Building

After changing materials several times, from rigid insulation to cardboard tubes for our Nuit Blanche installation, we've moved forward to building our first prototype of our 'TESTtubes".

Working with 30 and 35 degree angles, we've started to design a branching system out of cardboard tubes with friction fit connections that allow for the pattern to be duplicated and connected continuously. These are photographs from our first test build of the project using 2 different widths and lengths of tubes at night at the School of Architecture in Cambridge.

 

 

Inventory

In order to continue working with our plethora of cardboard tubes, we had to do a quick inventory of sizes; with tubes varying both in length, thickness and in diameter, we can start to refine how our patterns can form and what tubes we'll have more or less of. Taking this inventory also lets us see which tubes can connect to each other, and what kind of connections will be necessary for them to work together.

Product Play

In brewing ideas for Nuit Blanche, we started experimenting with straws and rigid forms. How can tubes and pipes fit together? And what angles allow for different atmospheres? Low and enclosed to high and open...we're able to create different types of canopies; an "exterior interior" sort of space. Straws are easier to deal with than large scale cardboard tubes, but make for fast models; even allowing us to experiment with way to create furniture or moving objects.

Tristan models what we find to be our most intriguing form so far.