Storefront is pleased to announce the winner and finalists of the Closed Worlds Design Competition. A jury comprised of Michelle Addington, Mitchell Joachim, Lydia Kallilpoliti, Michael Young, and Eva Franch selected the winning installation, Some World Games.

 

Some World Games is a virtual reality installation displayed at Storefront for Art and Architecture as part of Closed Worlds, an exhibition curated by Lydia Kallipoliti that presents an archive of 41 living prototypes of closed resource regeneration systems built over the last century. The archive represents an unexplored genealogy of closed systems in architectural practice. Some World Games brings a virtual reality installation to the gallery as a contemporary 42nd prototype of a closed system.

 

WINNING INSTALLATION

 

Some Worlds Games by Farzin Farzin

[Farzin Lotfi-Jam, Sharif Anous, John Arnold]

 

Some World Games is an immersive environment that urges visitors to explore and experiment with virtual prototypes generated from the archive of 41 closed systems exhibited as part of the larger Closed Worlds exhibition. Participants are guided through the installation on a looped track that channels their kinetic motion through an orbiting virtual environment.

 

Some World Games harnesses the expended energy of exhibition exploration—the acts of reading, viewing, and wandering—and puts this agency on display. Entering the installation is a decisive act in which the visitor consents to a moment of vulnerability, plugging into the universe of the archive and engaging with its content through virtual immersion in physical space.

 

FF_SomeWorldGames

Some World Games. Image by Farzin Farzin.

 

About the Installation Designer

Farzin Farzin designs spaces, software, and media. Founded and led by Farzin Lotfi-Jam since 2008, the studio operates from New York City. Farzin Lotfi-Jam (b. 1984, Tehran) is an adjunct professor at Columbia University. He holds advanced degrees from Columbia University and RMIT University in Melbourne Australia.  He is a 2015-2017 Fellow of the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart and was a 2013-2014 Sanders Fellow at the University of Michigan. His work investigates the means by which objects, sites and systems acquire cultural value and examines the representation of value in architectural form.

 

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FINALISTS

 

Runner-Up:

Two Naughts by Ibañez Kim

[Mariana Ibañez, Simon Kim, Mark Yim, Chris Johnson]

 

Two naughts is a prototype transitioning from a closed circle into a different lofted circle, producing a curving, vaulted surface – a strange object that rocks but doesn’t fall, created from a simple transformation of formal geometries. Inside the object, there are embedded electronics and hydronics in a feedback system of piezo-electric film, which activates radiant heating. To access the heat, visitors must physically push the object, much like a weeble-wobble.

 

Two-Naughts

 

Two Naughts. Image by Ibañez Kim.

 

 

Honorable Mention:

Safe House by APTUM

[Julie Larsen, Roger Hubeli]

 

Safe House is a global vault, a safe keep for architectural ideas as seeds for alternative worlds. Materially, the Safe house is a depository in a hermetically enclosed chamber where the exhibition is located. There is only one air-lock entry to the vault and a hidden emergency exit door.

Safe House

 

Safe House. Image by APTUM.

 

 

Honorable Mention:

Breathe Box by CASE

[Anna Dyson, Josh Draper, Nancy Diniz, Naomi Keena, Mohamed Aly, Berardo Mattalucci, Benjamin Feagin, Kenton Phillips, Mae-Ling Lokko]

 

Breathe Box is an apparatus for a series of public experiments that will test health parameters and executive function relative to IAQ (Internal Air Quality). Participants will sign releases, fill out medical questionnaires and don wearable biometric devices. With AMPS switched off, up to four people at a time will sit in the Breathe Box for up to several hours. As CO2 levels reach a critical point, artificial lighting will activate and a series of fans will draw the air in the Breathe Box through the roots of each AMPS module. Healthier, more breathable air will be returned to the Breathe Box.

 

Breathe Box

 

Breathe Box. Image by CASE.