Mobile Orchard

source: highlike

Work: Summary The Mobile Orchard is an inhabitable public art installation by atmos. It’s a hymn to the urban fruit tree – a celebration of the 2013 theme set by its commissioners, the City of London Festival. Its exuberant design mutates the wonder of natural trees with a structure ergonomically tailored to humans, offering a labyrinth of complex and inviting spaces that seek to nourish all the senses – celebrating both the formal structures of nature, and the social structures of cities. It previewed in Paternoster Square before commencing a weekly journey that stopped at Devonshire Square, the Gherkin, and Finsbury Avenue Square. ___ The Cast The Mobile Orchard centres on a sculptural timber oasis that doubles as immersive summer street furniture – morphing into seating, shelter, stairway and sky-throne. Its undulating roots offer a landscape for lounging, including sinuous benches and a molten armchair that cradle the gaze upwards through the hollow trunk. Massive branches worm outwards from a dramatically leaning trunk to offer further seats, splaying to form steps that spiral upwards around the undulating trunk to a throne at the tip. A lightweight latticework of curved and folded aluminium unfurls from the laminated plywood grains to support a canopy of lasercut leaves – each blade waste-lessly cut in the shape of a local London borough, with the host borough further subdivided into wards – the blossom and seeds of the project. The branches cradle a constellation of Braeburn apples, refreshed as quickly as the local City workers can pluck and eat them. The trunk houses a miniature processor that illuminates its bark with glowing Xylem, waterproof LED veins uniting sky and soil, their sinuous lines graphically delineating the segments of the tree’s core geometry, each terminating in a glowing spot of LED moon-light. The man-made tree was donated to Trees for Cities, who plan to tour it across Britain for 5 years, while its attendant choir of young fruit trees have been donated to the City’s first orchard, and to a host of other local London schools to start their own orchards.   Overview The design of the Mobile Orchard furthers atmos’s ongoing investigations of natural forms, organic structures, experiential ergonomics, digital fabrication, and innovative public landscapes. It was parametrically designed using scripts and algorithms that explore the mathematical rules of growth so brilliantly exemplified by nature, enabling an unprecedented level of highly-resolved complexity. In homage to the surfaces of its modernist host borough, the design originally proposed lightweight interlocking lasercut steel sheets, using curved folds to economically achieve large spans. The evolution on towards a plywood solution developed for reasons of both cost and comfort, offering a warmer and more welcoming series of surfaces for the public to enjoy; the design of the secondary branches retains the only trace of the original curved-fold sheet metal design. Though natural in form, the project is centrally about people and interaction, collectivity – and cities. Its forms ape humans, moulded to their bodies, mirroring their movements. Its branches offer its visitors food, and hosted a range of eating events – a core interest of the studio, whose director created Latitudinal Cuisine and Global Feast for the Olympics, merging design with fine-dining in the aspiration to stimulate both mind and body. The Mobile Orchard is intended to challenge and inspire, to a offer a background that becomes a prop for the actor and player in all of us, and to encourage exploration and interaction.
Photographer: Alex Haw
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
source: mobileorchard

She Mobile Orchard is a new public installation by atmos – an inhabitable hymn to the urban fruit tree, commissioned as the centrepiece for the City of London Festival 2013. Its exuberant design celebrates the wonder of trees, and offers a magical mutation – a welcoming structure tailored to humans. The project seeks to create a new kind of public landscape that merges the best of man-made design and organic nature. It offers a labyrinth of complex, intriguing, generous spaces that seek to nourish all the senses – celebrating both natural trees, and the communion of cities.It centres on a large, sculptural timber oasis that doubles as immersive summer street furniture – morphing into seating, shelter, stairway and sky-throne.

Its undulating roots offer a landscape for lounging, including sinuous benches and molten armchairs that cradlethe gaze upwards through the hollow trunk. Massive branches worm outwards from a dramatically leaning trunk to offer further seats, splaying to form steps that flow upwards to a branch-clad throne at the tip. A lightweight latticework of aluminium unfurls from the laminated plywood grains to support a canopy of laser-cut leaves – each blade a local London borough, with the host borough further subdivided into wards – the blossom and seeds of the project. Electric LED lighting threads through its veins, uniting base and crown, its sinuous lines like section-cuts that graphically describe the segments of its core geometry, terminating in glowing bulbs of moon-light spots. The installation is edible – cradling a constellation of real apples, refreshed daily, that are ripe for the plucking by any member of the public.

It is accompanied by a choir of young fruit trees that, like the modular nature of the tree itself, will grow over time, awaiting a future in schools and orchards across London.

The project will host a series of events and performances, including specially-commissioned theatre and music, a Fruit-Feast dinner and an Urban Picnic of gleaned fruit and veg from the team at Feeding the 5,000.

The Orchard moves each week to a new venue in the City of London before its young live trees are distributed to schools and orchards across London, and its sculptural centrepiece donated to Trees for Cities, who will tour it across Britain for 5 years.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
source: icandela

The Mobile Orchard (El huerto móvil) es el nombre de la instalación artística que el pasado mes de julio destacó en el City of London Festival, un evento que llenó las calles del Square Mile de la capital inglesa de huertos urbanos formados por árboles reales y otros creados para la ocasión.
El estudio Atmos es el autor de The Mobile Orchard (El huerto móvil), un himno a los árboles frutales urbanos, el tema cental de la edición de este año del City of London Festival, un espectáculo anual de música, danza, arte, cine, poesía, familia y eventos.

Su diseño exuberante muta la maravilla de los árboles naturales con una estructura que busca alimentar todos los sentidos, que celebran tanto las estructuras geométricas de la naturaleza como las estructuras sociales de las ciudades.

La instalación lumínica se pudo ver por primera vez en Paternoster Square para iniciar después un recorrido semanal por diferentes enclaves del Festival londinense como Devonshire Square, The Gherkin y Finsbury Avenue Square.

Durante el día. la instalación ofrecía al público su sombra para protegerse del sol de verano. Por la noche, latía con un ritmo eléctrico interno, y sus ramas se convertían en venas luminosas que iluminaban el camino hacia una constelación de luces que lucían en sus extremidades.

LED lineal, Architectural FX y Arup han esponsorizado toda la iluminación, equipamiento y diseño que ha hecho posible The Mobile Orchard.

Los patrocinadores han trabajado sin problemas y sin descanso para que el árbol luciera durante la noche aún más espectacular que durante el día. Al igual que con los árboles naturales, el tronco se convirtió en el sistema nervioso central de la instalación, enviando señales hacia arriba y abajo de su longitud