Finalists: CCC 2015

Author
mediachef
Post
12.29.2014
 

The following teams and projects were selected as finalists for the 2015 Creative City Challenge. In February, they will present their full proposals to a jury, which will select the winning entry.

Niko Kubota and Jon Reynolds, mini_polis

Computer sketch, mini_polis

Computer =-generated sketch, mini_polis

mini_polis is a scale model of Minneapolis built in collaboration with community participants in a series of “build workshops.” The mini_polis team, led by local designer-educator-artists Niko Kubota and Jon Reynolds, will collect place-based hopes and memories at the workshops and create a multimedia interface within the finished city model to share these stories. The completed mini_polis will be a landscape of lighted plywood buildings, laid out to approximate the Minneapolis downtown and surrounding neighborhoods. A multimedia interactive map station will allow visitors to interact with installation: selected buildings will light up and play the model builder’s story, giving the viewer a peek into the experiences and hopes of a particular place they can now locate in their city.

Perkins+Will, Shadow Swings

Computer-generated sketch, Shadow Swings

Computer-generated sketch, Shadow Swings

Shadow Swings is a series of musical swings around a central canopied area conceived by a team from the architectural firm Perkins+Will, led by Anne Smith and Doug Bergert. Like the planetary dance of Venus and Earth, during the day metal pipe “wind chimes” suspended within the Shadow Swings activate musical tones. Each swing has a unique pitch associated with it to encourage collaboration among participants to create a musical performance. At night, multipoint light sources embedded in a protective bench along the perimeter of each set of swings cast moving shadows from swing-goers onto a recycled canvas drum, suspended overhead transforming the space into an interactive performance surface. Shadow Swings will surprise and delight all ages as unexpected interactions gather the community together to collectively create a changing canvas of art and symphony of music simply by enjoying the conversant and visceral experience of soaring through the air on a swing.

PLAAD, We All Share the Same Skies

Computer-generated sketch, We All Share the Same Skies

We All Share the Same Skies by PLAAD, an interdisciplinary design office led by Matthew Byers and Mark Stankey, will provide visitors to the convention center, whether Minnesotans, outside visitors or community members, an opportunity to introduce or reacquaint themselves to or with our sky through three separate enclosed structures, joined by a common central canopy element.  Within each structure seating will allow visitors to recline and experience live feeds of the northern sky projected on a stretched projection screen: constellations at night, the whispering sound of wind racing through pines, the quaking of a birch stand, lazy clouds drifting across a humid summer sky, or thunderclouds unleashing a downpour. Speakers located in the walls and behind the benches will provide auditory sensations to augment the live feeds – the crackle of a bonfire, the call of the loon or the chatter of the pine squirrel. Juxtaposing the northern Minnesota and urban Convention Center Plaza environments will create a hyper-awareness of and dialogue between the urban condition and the natural environment, between individual and community.