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Light Drops
This is my second pre-diploma project which I made during my 10th semester at university. It was meant to be a more creative project related to arts. It began as an art gallery inspired by Christo and Jeanne-Claude's work and it ended up as a big installation and open public space in the centre of Sofia.
The project was initially driven by Christo and Jeanne-Claude's art work because the scale and their approach to work are similar to those of the architects. Some even say that Christo is the greatest Bulgarian architect of our time. For me the project had to try solving a social problem. I chose to deal with the problem of communication between people in the big city. I wanted to create a public place where people would be less stressed, less aggressive and more sincere.
The location of the plot is at one of the most important streets in the centre of Sofia - Rakovski street. It is the street where you can find most of the theatres in Sofia and also the Opera house, a library, galleries and the biggest concert hall. The site is also one of the few unbuilt green spaces in the centre and therefore it was important to preserve the trees. During the spring and the summer the place is full of people spending their time together and enjoying the good weather. But I thought that it could become more exciting for the people without losing its social and public character.
That is why, I chose to make an open-air gallery for light installations and a public space for people to meet, talk, discuss ideas or simply being together.
[ Situation ]
[ Map of the cultural buildings at and near Rakovski street ]
If Rakovski street was a river...
...it would probably start from the highest point of Sofia - the Aleksander Nevski cathedral - and "flood" all the empty spaces between the buildings.
For me Rakovski street is like a tube and people are the fluid rinning inside of it. There are sections where the flow is under higher pressure (where the street is narrower and there is not enough space for the pedestrians; people are angry and aggressive) and there are sections where the flow is slower and the pressure is lower (people are calmer, walking more slowly; they are less stressed and aggressive). The wider the spaces, the better the people.
[ Explorations through models ]
[ Morphology of the terrain ]
Since I wanted to preserve all the trees on the site but also change the route of the people in order to slow them down for a while, I decided to make the paths for the pedestrians a little bit curved. I wanted to slow them down deliberately so that they could take a look around. The green spaces surrounding the trees are meant to act like small islands. The new spaces for the people to get together are "dug" into the ground in the shapes of curved bathtubs and are meant to resemble boats with which people could float away and let themselves dream for a while.
[ Plan at street level ]
[ Sections of the "tubs" ]
[ View 3 ]
[ View 4 ]
The idea of Rakovski street being a river with meanders (the places where the river makes turns) came from the fact that almost all of the theatres in Sofia are located at this street. Therefore, I see the theatres and the other cultural buildings (concert hall, library, galleries, chirches) as meanders which slow down the flow of people. All of this made me want to cover Rakovski street with fabric in the manner of Christo and Jeanne-Claude who used fabric to express the most important characters of the site. I thought that I could cover the site with some kind of translucent mesh which would let the trees grow and change and whch could also be used as a screen for projections. The mesh covering the site is the giant canvas for the artists of light installations.
[ View 2 ]
[ Plan of the mesh ]
[ View 5 ]
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