Wallpaper Cladding

The building would stand for eight years in a building site; a place where future-inside things are exposed and past-inside things are revealed.

Wallpaper

Like a gate on a city wall, the Infobox is part of the hording which protects the site, and is an opening into it.

Building as Gate on the Hoarding

Still from Mary Poppins, walking up the smoke stairs

Model Photograph

Inside-Out House, Liverpool,
Urban Splash Infobox Competition

with Arup (2008)

Our entry for the Tribeca Infobox is for a house turned inside-out. The brick walls are on the inside, and the wallpaper on the outside.

The building would stand for eight years in a building site; a place where future-inside things are exposed and past-inside things are revealed. Our Infobox stands inside-out like a dress or a suit which is being sewn, it’s lining showing. Like an internal wall, unclothed during demolition, the decor is expressed; sideboards, picture frames, and wallpaper stepping to follow the staircase.

The building is placed in the suggested location, centrally along Great George Street. It’s parallelogram shape defined by the present and future street layouts. Like a gate on a city wall, the Infobox is part of the hording which protects the site, and is an opening into it.

Visitors enter through a huge ‘fireplace’ into a reception with office space adjacent. Up on the first floor is a space for meetings and presentations behind the ‘mirror above the mantelpiece.’ The second floor houses the sales area and the big model, which visitors can also look at from above through the cut-out in the third floor exhibition space and main viewing area. The saw-tooth roof above bounces north-light down and top-lights the model.

Throughout the building, visitors can look out through lacy picture frames into Tribeca. From Great George Street these frames exhibit either the visitors themselves or work in co-ordination with the arts programme.

Model Photograph

The construction of this building would be simple and fast, minimising wet trades. The main structure would be a demountable steel frame which would support prefabricated panel products for the walls and floors. The wallpaper facade would be made from cut-out golden panels, in a copper and aluminium alloy. The interior spaces would be finished with brickwork in prefabricated panels, and bathrooms and kitchens could be prefabricated pods.

The building would be naturally ventilated with openable windows. It would be well insulated to minimise heating in winter and prefabricated concrete floor decks would provide thermal mass to help keep the building cool in summer.

After the building’s proposed eight year lifespan as the Infobox, it could be sold and converted to office or exhibition space, or it could be dismantled and relocated elsewhere.

Model Photograph