Party Animal
‘Party Animal’ is the collaborative brainchild of Diogo Aguiar and Teresa Otto who formed LIKEarchitects in 2010 and have won awards for their creative installations, notably ‘Bus Stop Symbiosis’.
The ‘Party Animal’ intervention took up stage in an attractive, yet underused, passageway in Lisbon, Portugal, with the aim of maximizing the celebrations of the patron Saint António. The festival of Santo António is a citywide, month long, fiesta sporting bright colours, loud music and historical culture. The month of June saw ‘Party Animal’ as a key player in the traditional celebrations. The cultural association Parafernália joined forces with Ordem dos Arquitectos (in order) to revitalize, and reactivate, the site thus placing it on the map as a destination worthy of a visit.
‘Party Animal’ takes up what would be, in any city, a tough brief; an architecturally sensitive and fractious location, a tight budget, a grand yet light weight volume of 480m3, the need to be the star of the show during city events whilst also being the understated backdrop to a variety of performers and performances. ‘Party Animal’ was designed to impose itself as an iconic urban catalyser while retaining and respecting the consolidated spatial hierarchy of the square.
The form is inspired by the surface pattern of the nearby 16th Century ‘Casa dos Bicos’, or ‘House of Spikes’, which is faced with over one thousand diamond-shaped stones, and was one of the few buildings to survive the 1755 earthquake. The structure of ‘Party Animal’ however, is far from 16th century in origin. It is something altogether different; a modern, lightweight, pre fabricated, modular system forms the skeleton onto which translucent red plastic is molded.
During the day, the sunlight of Lisbon makes the fabric glow red and reveals the expressive projections of the structure’s shadows. At night, when the events take place, the stage is illuminated into a sinuous frame of red light. The intervention becomes attractive through its passivity, as the deep red of the transparent plastic is highlighted by the subtle lighting design and composition. The translucency allows the glory of St. Pauls Church, directly behind the structure, to be part of the intervention and be fully visible from all over the square.
This was also included in the print edition, Issue 24 click here
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LIKEarchitects (Diogo Aguiar (diogoaguiar.com) + Teresa Otto (teresaotto.com)
Lightning Design
LIKEarchitects (Diogo Aguiar + Teresa Otto)
