Emily Hagopian
Venice, Italy

Dominique Price, Architect
Colin Billings
Maeliosa Barstow
Ashley Hickman

Overview

Installation entitled “Open_City” for the European Cultural Centre architecture bienal in Venice 2018 seeks to propagate new versions/visions of public space that respond to advanced social situations in our urban fabric. The installation reconstructs the immersive experience of a private office, designed as open public space, for the headquarters of Airbnb in San Francisco. A lifting veil surrounds the user in an immersion of composite photograph, video, and glimpses of the passing public to represent the public intimacy that the urban intervention creates.

A collaboration with the photographer, Emily Hagopian, captured the potency of the hybrid private-public plaza in a digital composite. Like the architecture itself, the photographic accomplishment is revealed over time, through an experience of discovery which provokes us to seek and occupy space, reinvigorating a sense of wanderlust.
The breach at the interior of the exhibition space expands the territory of public from hallway to interior, creating a moment of exploration that folds together participants.
Dynamic social conditions are enabled through the articulated spatial organization of the Personal and the Shared, instigating a more intimate level of engagement in the people and place around us.