Airgloo
Airgloo 2007 (in cooperation with Henrik Jan Haarink www.haajee.com)
As visitors of the USA, we as Europeans, noticed the American habit of cooling down their environment to a large extent. If the temperature outside rises to 25 degrees or above, you have to wear a sweater inside most buildings, metro’s, trains and busses, because inside it’s freezing cold. Every transition from the outside air to inside and back is a slap in the face. Besides the fact that it is uncomfortable; the cooling consumes a lot of energy.
As a comment on this American habit of over-controlling the environment, we have made a design for an artwork with old air conditioners as the main building material. With approximately 50 air conditioners, as a replacement for the iceblock the Eskimo uses, we would like to build an igloo. A few, maybe five, of the air conditioners should still function, so they can transport the cool air from within the igloo to the room it is standing in. So as a viewer, if you walk around the igloo it will be very cold and if you’re inside, it will be hot.
In combining the age-old traditional, natural way of controlling temperature with the high-tech way of doing so, we create an alienating effect.
