Abstract
When discussing the correlation between technological progress and the development of modern architecture, case studies from the fine arts can be instructive. This article undertakes a close architectural analysis of Tomás Saraceno’s walkable art installation “In Orbit” (2013) by releasing previously unpublished technical specifications. A brief history of envisioned and constructed space architecture of the last hundred years—which can be divided into three phases—serves to locate the installation within the currents of predictive utopia, realized architecture and technological development. It becomes clear that Saraceno not only takes up pre-existing architectural techniques, but also develops them further.
Highlights
In vertiginous heights beneath the glass roof of K21 Düsseldorf, a major museum for contemporary art in Düsseldorf (Germany), a giant spider seems to have woven a horizontal web in different layers.People walk, lie or stand unsteadily within it
“In Orbit” (Figure 1) is a daring walk-in installation by the Argentinian artist Tomás Saraceno (*1973), which was installed with the help of numerous specialists in 2013 and renewed in 2017
As I will argue, this installation can be regarded as a self-sufficient artistic creation as much as it addresses the ideas of flying cities as they have been passed down throughout the history of utopia
Summary
In vertiginous heights beneath the glass roof of K21 Düsseldorf, a major museum for contemporary art in Düsseldorf (Germany), a giant spider seems to have woven a horizontal web in different layers. “In Orbit” (Figure 1) is a daring walk-in installation by the Argentinian artist Tomás Saraceno (*1973), which was installed with the help of numerous specialists in 2013 and renewed in 2017. “In Orbit” is comparable to walkable pneumatic structures such as “On Space Time Foam” (Figure 3), which was installed at HangarBicocca in Milan (2012/2013), and which allowed visitors to walk beneath and upon several layers of inflated plastic foil. In so doing, they were displacing air, and affecting the environment of any other visitor in the installation (Saraceno 2014).
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