Project ID#139
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Acconci Studio
A STORE OF ROTATING RINGS: PRODUCTS ON THE MOVE
Acconci Studio (Vito Acconci, Stephen Roe)
The store is organized by rings. From each doorway, a line of rings makes a corridor through the store. At the side of each corridor, additional rings tilt toward the corridor and intertwine with the rings of the corridor; each pf these tilted rings makes the boundaries of a room off to the side of the corridor.
The rings rotate. Each successive ring rotates in an opposite direction: one ring rotates clockwise, the next counter-clockwise, etc. Each ring is container for inaccessible products, products meant not to be touched. The ring is a circular transparent box, a circular tube (this should be relatively light, so it might be made of polycarbonate); the products are attached to the inside wall of the tube -- the inaccessible products circle around you as you walk, they fly over your head and disappear beneath your feet.
Within each corridor, the space between rotating rings is spanned by a curved shelving unit. These shelves might be made of perforated metal. They hold accessible products, products meant to be touched. A shelving unit might start at the floor and come up to the height of your waist; or a shelving unit might start at your knees and come up to your chest. The products here curve up your body as you walk; they're products to grab for, products meant to be touched. There might be light behind the perforated metal, lighting the products from behind.
The floor within the corridor is also perforated metal. From each doorway, the floor within the corridor rises as it heads toward the middle of the store; the rise of the floor allows each rotating ring to pass under the floor -- the rise of the floor, also, allows light to come from below, providing ambient light as you walk.
To the side of the corridor, the elliptical rooms formed by the tilted rings have floors of their own, made also of perforated metal. The floor might fold up at the edge to make shelves; these shelves fill the space between the floor and the tilted ring, thereby making a railing as a by-product. These room function, for example, as a room for accessible furniture, that can be sat in -- a room for catalogues (you might sit and read in the room) -- a room for watching video.
The outside wall of the store cuts the ellipse of one of the rooms; the tilted ring that makes the boundary of the room isn't stopped by the wall; the ring continues its rotation outside the building. The counter and cashier's desk for the store is a glass plate fixed over a nearly horizontal rotating ring. As you pay for the products you've bought, more products, inaccessible products, skim past you. The rotating ring of the counter continues out the window, inviting people in the street to come into the store.
29.09.07
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