hanging art
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client: Kapopoulos

location: Golden Hall / Athens / Greece

architectural design: archivirus in collaboration with Dimitris Thomopoulos & AS Architects

date: 2008

 

Art is the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions. Art can have various forms and the need for its display demands the design of specific spaces where the audience can come closer to the displayed art. Of course art display is not the only issue since in most cases art also serves commercial values. The “hanging art” project, came up when we were asked to transform a really small space – 50 sq.m.(situated inside a big shopping mall), into a commercial art gallery where art becomes the actual product for sell. We tried to think of different ways to display art, so it would be easier for the customer to buy. A shopping mall is consisted mainly of clothing stores , where clothes are hanged and the customer is able to examine the product before he decides to buy it or not. So the idea was “hanging art”. Why not? The first task to be solved was how art paintings could be hanged. Hanging panels from a special structure on the ceiling, varying in sizes and constructed of metal frame and wood, serve this purpose. Thus the panels become the hangers where the art paintings are placed .The second task to be solved, was the interactivity between the customer and the panel, in such a way that the panel would stop to be a fixed in place hanger and would adopt all the elastic elements of an actual clothe hanger which can be easily rotated and maneuvered. To achieve such a goal was rather easy with a simple mechanism constructed on the ceiling. The metal poles, the panels are hanged from, end up on roller guides following a certain route on the ceiling and allowing them to rotate and move to different positions. In that way, a transformability of the space is also succeeded and the small art gallery can turn into an open space which can serve different purposes. The display equipment of this art space is completed with some structures for the sculptures, which seem to be stripes whipped from the floor. A technique which gives the aesthetics of bare concrete is used as the basic material for the entire gallery with the “hanging art” to differentiate.