Chrysalis - A Photographic Journey

For those visiting for the first time this post summarizes the Chrysalis design process in one photo heavy stream and incorporates most of the photos posted previously.  More to come.

Twelve people variously interested in mobile architecture, design, collaborative work, art, environmental design all met for the first time in early 2011 to start a 5 day Workshop with New York based artist Mary Mattingly, a deceptively quiet young woman who is astoundingly prolific and in town for 2 weeks as part of a residency. After Day 1 five people returned and, meaningful or not, all were women, most knew how to sew, and by occupations were artists, architect, writer,  landscape architect in training, seamstress. 

People were willing to put time in on this project for different reasons. Mine were that I enjoy collaborative work with interesting people and that  this project met my criteria of having to be low cost, low barrier (except for time),  conceptual, and could be documented online and result in an object or idea that could be transferable to other projects.

On Day one Mary showed and discussed some of the ideas she had about mobile architectural and these are detailed in this post. 

(All photographs in this next section were taken by Raven Girl Photography)



We began sketching ideas and decided to use days 2 - 5 to make a prototype of a single section.



There was a lot of sewing construction after we opted to try and make a section for eveyrone to take with them to continue to work on. Rebecca Erickson sewing.

   

Mary cutting and measuring silicone treated cloth.

  

Seat belt webbing donated by Janet Morton and cut to size for each section.



Notes on what to do next.

More sewing, ripping and resewing. Morgan Crowley (foreground) and Rebecca Erickson

Each section was 14' long and 8'wide, double walled and edged in seatbelt webbing and industrial velcro. Morgan Crowley wearing.

Once we got to the last day we had a section cut out and partially completed of what we were now calling a Chrysalis for each participant. We were not sure what we would do with them and most people rolled their up and put it away. I was looking for another project and decided to push forward with investigating what I could do with this fold-able "sculpture"

A lean to type tent. We added three channels for tent poles with the idea that these would hold the structure up if 6 sections were attached to each other.

Another variation of shelter

We met the weekend before Nuit Blanche to do a trial set up. We had 4 sections  and tried a centre support pole idea using a tree.

Chrysalis going for a walk

One Section used as shelter

Some night shots of Chrysalis

Joe Sanderson took these photographs.

Tired and need coffee after nuit blanche in Guelph

A friend, attempting to describe the dilemma he was having in setting up his Nuit Blanche project as intended, described it as a kluge, which the urban dictionary partly defined as:

When a device or situation is of great complexity and either cannot be explained easily, or leaves the respondent perplexed.... That seemed an apt description for Chrysalis last night. We continued to refine the idea, try out ideas and speculate on future iterations. It was fun, meaningful to me and collected a group of people in its wake that would never have met otherwise. I enjoyed getting to know them all. While I work on editing the photographs here  is a public album. Enjoy!

1mile2 Guelph Mobile Architecture Project

One more day to nuit blanche!

If you are coming out tomorrow night to see us, please do not be surprised if , upon seeing the Chrysalis, you think,


"Huh? So that's it?"


That's kind of what I thought when we had part of it up last weekend. It is dwarfed by the trees, not that it was intended to dominate the landscape, it was meant to be a solo structure that could adapt itself to being scalable and moved around an environment.
We are curious to see how else we can configure it tomorrow, maybe you will have some ideas? We will have a sketch book and markers out for people to use. 

Today I gathered up all the solar powered lights  and planted them in the sun to start to charge.
Morgan dropped off a flag she made, to represent her participation in the project, as she will not be able to join us as she is on her way to walk the Camino de Santiago trail in Spain.
I unrolled each section this afternoon and made notes on what has to be sewn tomorrow to finish them. Not much, a few grommets, tabs and one last tent pole channel.

Trial Run - Photographs of a prototype in process

Lisa, Anne and I met today to try out a few ideas in advance of  Nuit  Blanche. Our three hours together were exactly what we hope will happen that night. A collaboration, experimentation, exploration and conversation about mobility, structures and related tangential topics. With the Nuit Blanche White Night bus stopping right at our corner, stop by and visit. We want to talk.

Vimeo! Found this movie about the workshop

Here is a video Mary Mattingly made about the workshop.