Van Alen Institute presents

UNITED_BOTTLE PARTICIPATE!

a project by Van Alen Institute New York Prize Fellows:
INSTANT ARCHITECTS, Dirk Hebel & Jörg Stollmann with Tobias Klauser

Opening Reception
Friday, March 28, 2008 7-9pm

Exhibition
March 28 - April 25, 2008
Mon-Fri 10am-6pm, Sat 12-5pm

at Van Alen Institute
30 West 22nd Street, 6th Floor
New York, NY 10010
212 924 7000

Van Alen Institute is pleased to announce a public exhibition by New York Prize Fellows Dirk Hebel and Jörg Stollmann. Hebel and Stollmann’s project, UNITED_BOTTLE, proposes a new form of plastic bottle designed to function as instant building material. The project’s working hypothesis is that design should think beyond the product and consider the waste for future use. The intersection of local and global distribution and recycling circuits forms the basis of UNITED_BOTTLE – the form of newly designed PET/PP bottles can efficiently fit into standardized shipping boxes, and can be filled with found materials to be used as prefabricated building units for the construction of both temporary and permanent structures.

Full-scale testing and participatory involvement of prospective users is crucial to UNITED_BOTTLE's design development. During their spring 2008 fellowship term at Van Alen Institute, Hebel and Stollmann launched the "UNITED_BOTTLE Participate!" campaign, soliciting over twenty designers, architects, critics and prospective secondary users to imagine potential implementation concepts and design proposals for UNITED_BOTTLE.

The exhibition, opening Friday, March 28, 2008 and running through April 25, 2008, will include a full-scale bottle shelter that tests a range of building materials and construction methods, as well as all submissions to the “Participate!” campaign.  Contributors include Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano of lot/ek architecture in New York, Nasrine Seraji of Atelier Seraji in Paris, Teddy Cruz of Estudio Teddy Cruz in San Diego, Meron Kassahun and Tibebu Daniel Desta of Addis Ababa, and John Habraken, the Dutch architect responsible for designing the Heineken WOBO (World Bottle) produced in 1963.

   

Dirk Hebel and Jörg Stollmann are co-founders and principals of INSTANT. INSTANT works at the intersection of architecture, nature, technology and communication, foregrounding the body as a biological and social construct in order to develop research projects and architectural practice on various scales. Recent projects include the international traveling exhibition INVENTIONEERING_ARCHITECTURE, the private home HAUS_BLICK in Duesseldorf and the installation ON_AIR in Berlin. Hebel studied at the ETH Zurich and received his M. Arch from Princeton University. Stollmann studied at the UdK Berlin and received his M. Arch from Princeton University. They have held teaching positions at the UdK Berlin, the TU Berlin, Princeton University, and American University of Shariah, and they currently teach at the ETH Zurich.

The New York Prize Fellowship is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency. UNITED_BOTTLE was made possible with the additional support of: /// ETH Zürich: Marc Angélil, Andrea Depalzes /// RED DOT: Ken Koo, Peter Zec /// LOGO Plastics: Hans Peter Logo /// DesignExchange Singapore: Tarry Lim /// Stylepark AG: Robert Vollhard, Christian Gärtner /// Michael Bell /// John Habraken /// Giuseppe Lignano /// Alessandra Ponte /// Ilka & Andreas Ruby /// Mark Wasiuta /// Sarah Whiting and all contributors to the Participate! Campaign.

Visit www.united-bottle.org or www.vanalen.org/nyprize for more information.