source: re-title

“The Fabulous Floating Inflatable Villa”, designed by Miami-based, Venezuelan-born architect Luis Pons will be on view at Dacra Development’s Aqua, Allison Island during Art Basel Miami Beach. The inflatable pavilion, fabricated by Alejandro Handal, will be moored at 250 West 63rd Street, from November 30 – December 4, 2005. This project, sponsored by Dacra, The Wolfsonian-Florida International University, and Inflatable Concepts, Inc. is part of a series of inflatable installations and objects designed by Pons, in response to/inspired by the excesses of Miami real estate culture.
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source: designboom

at art basel in 2005, florida-based architect luis pons presented his visionary ‘fabulous floating inflatable villa’ – a billowing structure seen offshore in miami as commentary on the egoistic ‘mcmansion’ culture of contemporary american society of that time. following seven years of a palpably shifting real estate climate, pons re-introduced the piece as part of miami design district inventory project with ‘the deflated villa’ during art basel miami beach 2012 in a completely new context – the antithesis of its predecessor. where the ‘inflatable villa’ critiqued the blindness of uninspired grandeur, the latest iteration enters into a continued dialogue of societal behaviour, however, now, focusing on the vulnerability and fragility of the human spirit in response to the plummeting values of homes – a bursting of the real estate bubble. what was a once proudly overbearing structure is now replaced with something much more self-effacing, shrunken to reflect the changing values and attitudes of miamians today.