• DevolutioN PARK

    退化公园

  • On the 27th floor of a 50-storey house, we rented a 90-square meter apartment with 2 bedrooms and converted it into a park. This house is located in a new high-density residential area in Xinglin Bay Xiamen. It’s a one stair-six units building with 300 families in total. If there are 3 people living in an apartment and the occupancy rate is 70%, this house will have nearly 600 residents. It’s a style of modern life, a single-function building with vertically superposed and mutually closed living space. The elevator is one of the most important traffic aisle (it is almost the only traffic aisle for high-layer residents). People’s public life revolves around a atrium park only can be used by the residents (where the usage of the elderly and children is higher).
    在一个50层高的住宅的27层，我们租下一套面积约90平方的两室一厅的公寓，将其改造成一个公园。这栋住宅位于厦门杏林湾，一个新兴的高密度住宅区。一梯六户，共约300户家庭，若每户有3口 人居住，在入住率百分之七十的时候，这栋住宅中也有将近600人。它代表了一种现代生活的样式， 一栋单一功能的建筑，生活空间纵向叠加，各自封闭。电梯是其中最主要的交通管道(对高层住户来说，它几乎是唯一的交通管道)。人们的公共生活围绕着一个仅供小区住户使用的中庭公园展开(其中老人和小孩的使用率居高)。
  • The location of the park

    公园区位图

  • Before the rise of the modern houses, traditional residential quarters usually share a park nearby. The park is a public life felds which is completely open and free accessing. Nowadays, parks are cut into privatized forms as a unit of closed houses, so people’s public life is divided. The park, which is located inside the buildings cuts the people’s public life further, which is only available to the residents who lives in the apartment.
    在这种现代住宅兴起前，老式住宅小区通常共享一个临近的公园。这种公园是一个完全开放的、可自由进出的公共生活场域。如今公园被切割成以封闭住宅为单位的私有化形式，人们的公共生活也因此被划分。这个位于楼房内部的公园进一步切割了公共生活，它仅仅提供给公寓中的住户使用。
  • The plan of the park

    公园平面图

  • The reason why the landlord allowed us to carry out such a transformation is he purchased the house as an investment or might live in the future, but he didn’t want to rent it out with simply decoration, which was obviously not worth. For a long time before we rented this apartment, it was vacant. It represents the wishes of some buyers in the emerging residential area. Imagine that it would be a way to transform these vacant apartments into small parks(or other types of public spaces). But it was not our original intention. DevolutioN PARK was a short-lived, symbolic project. it only survives for months. we don’t think it has any possi- bility and necessity to popularize. It is only showing a more extremely privatization of public life, as well as the relationship between the private space and the public space in modern cities.
    我们的房东之所以允许我们进行这样的改造，是因为他购买下这个住宅作为投资或在未来居住，但他并不希望将其简单装修后出租，因为这样显然是不划算的，因此在我们租下它之前，很长时间里这个房子是空置的。在新兴住宅区这代表了一部分购房者的意愿。想象一下，如果将这些空置的住宅改造成一个个小公园(或其他类型的公共空间)也不失为一个办法，但这不是我们的初衷，这个退化公园是短期的、象征性的，它仅仅存在几个月时间，我们并不觉得它有任何普及的可能和必要性， 它只是展示了一种更极端的私有化公共生活，以及现代城市中私人空间同公共空间的关系。
  • The interior of the park

    公园内部

  • Besides the park on the 27th floor, we cooperated with new media team SeeekLab to open an online park. Non-apartment people can access this online park through their computers and mobile phones as residents, which is connected to the 27th floor park in real time. People can participate in and start another form of public life through the barrages, connecting with computers or mobile phones. It’s based on Internet, anony- mous and non-community. You can even imagine a very post-modern image, someone sitting in the park, took out his phone, involved in the Internet public life. The number of people in online park and real park will be counted, and responses to the interfaces of online and real park in real time.
    在这个27楼的公园之外，我们与新媒体团队SeeekLab合作开放了一个线上公园。非公寓住户可通过电脑和手机端进入这个线上公园，它与27楼的退化公园实时相连，人们可以在电脑或手机后，通过弹幕的方式参与并展开另一种公共生活，它是基于互联网的、匿名的、非共同体的。你甚至不难想象一个非常后现代的画面，有人坐在公园里，拿出手机，参与着一种互联网的公共生活。线上的公园人数与线下的公园人数数据将得到统计，实时反应在线上和线下公园彼此的界面中。
  • (Author) Wang Qi
    (Film) Lin Ying
    (Photographer) Xu Xiaodong
    (Federated team) SeeekLab
    SeeekLab is an interdisciplinary new media design group working at the nexus of art, media and technology. SeeekLab is constantly creating installations to transcend the boundary between human emotions and technology, explore new means of expression and interaction. The works are mainly focused on emotional expressions.
    
www.seeeklab.com
    (撰文) 王琦
    (视频) 林滢
    (摄影) 许晓东
    (合作团队) SeeekLab
    
SeeekLab是一个集合了跨学科背景的新媒体装置创作团队，热衷于艺术、媒体和科技的交叉创作。 SeeekLab始终在作品中寻求装置之于人情感的意义，意图通过创作跨越人类情感和科技之间的界限，找出表达观点的新方式。