SweaterLodge
SweaterLodge is an installation selected to represent Canada at the Venice Biennale of Architecture, 2006.
As a comment on our culture of mass consumption, and our love of the great outdoors, the major element of the installation is a giant polarfleece sweater, 18 times human scale. Suspended indoors, an inhabited garment becomes a soft lodge.
The polarfleece fabric is manufactured from recycled plastic beverage bottles. The installation has fun with the notion of recycling as an act of absolution in a film fantasy of a city overrun by plastic water bottles. The film is activated by pedaling specially modified bicycle /projectors that are placed side by side so cyclists can race. Who can fill their blue box first?
In the spring of 2011 the Museum of Vancouver remounted the installation with the SweaterLodge:Unlatched exhibition.
Visitors were invited to remove their shoes and sit under the canopy of the big sweater to “levitate”, and later take some fabric home and make something. By sending a photo to the MOV Flickr site the public creations became part of the exhibition.
| Location: | Venice, Italy / Vancouver, BC |
| Client: | Canada Council for the Arts / MOV |
| Completed: | 2006 / 2011 |
| Studio Team: | Stephanie Robb (designer) Bill Pechet (designer) Heidi Nesbitt Gabe Daly |
| Project Team: | Pechet and Robb art and architecture ltd. Chris Macdonald, curator Greg Bellerby, curator, commisioner Jeremy Gruman, bicycle/projectors Miriam Blume, fundraising Elia Kirby, rigging Global Mechanic, film production |
| Fabricator: | Linda Chow & team, seamstress |
| Photos: | Scott Massey/ Gabe Daly / Global Mechanic |
| Distinctions: | 2006, Venice Biennale of Architecture 2011, Museum of Vancouver |