John Stuart's TimeZone proposes a series of interactive building blocks that provide real-time video communication between people of socio-economically diverse backgrounds whose daily routines are aligned along a single time zone. TimeZone addresses the potential for public spaces to stimulate group dialogue and revitalize public activities across cultures and languages. Designed for maximum durability and accessibility, the TimeZone pods employ wireless sensor technologies to facilitate interaction between users. They may be suspended or stacked, used individually or composed into multiple configurations.

During his fellowship term, Stuart has assembled an international team of collaborators to conceptualize, fabricate, and implement two prototypical TimeZone pods in New York City and in Lima, Peru, at the southernmost end of the Eastern Time Zone. Through a series of educational workshops incorporated into the course curricula for the Museum of Modern Art's "In the Making" program and the Center for Architecture Foundation's "Public Art/Public Spaces" studio, they plan to analyze the interactions between junior high and high school students in New York with high school students at the Colegio Santa Maria Marianistas in Lima, Peru, and to draw upon these workshops to further develop TimeZone for future implementation in other forms and places. For the duration of the educational workshops in July, one pod will be installed in New York at Van Alen Institute and then at MoMA, and the other will be installed on the campus of the Colegio Santa Maria Marianistas. Both TimeZone pods will return to the Institute at the end of the fellowship term, where John and his collaborators will conduct a demonstration and discussion to explore a range of technical and conceptual questions provoked by the project — about past, present and potential future relationships between information and materiality; and about virtual communications, privatization, and the public realm.

TimeZone is being developed in collaboration with Phillip Anzalone, Associate Director, Building Technologies, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, Columbia University; Cory Clarke, partner in the New York-based design firm, Tender; Cyril Manyara, London-based designer, Future-Systems; Eto Otigibe, artist and director of esORO Polymedia Projects, Jersey City, New Jersey; Christopher Whitelaw, architect, Evans & Paul; Jen Song, coordinator of school visit programs at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City; Lauren Adelman, educator, and Ariel Canegone, assistant educator, MoMA "In the Making" summer program; Grace Hwang, program coordinator and educator, Center for Architecture Foundation; Francisco Waltersdorfer, intern architect, Spillis Candela DMJM; Daniel Yep, architect, 51-1 Arquitectos, Lima, Peru; Gali Orbegoso, professor and academic director, Colegio Santa Maria Mariantistas; Jelena Zoranovic, professor and coordinator of the English Department, Colegio Santa Maria Marianistas, Lima, Peru; Michelle Chang, Steven Garcia, Daniel Kidd, Jon Turkula, Mathew Staudt, graduate architecture students at Columbia GSAPP; and recent Columbia GSAPP graduates Jennifer Flemming and Ashley Hanrahan. TimeZone is made possible by the additional support of: Colegio Santa Maria Marianistas in Lima, Peru; the School of Architecture, Florida International University in Miami; The Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation, Columbia University; and the Museum of Modern Art in New York; and with material and fabrication support from DuPont™ Corian® and Evans & Paul.

For more information about Stuart and his collaborators' work in process, visit www.johnstuartarchitecture.com/Blog/Blog.html.