For Spontaneous
SINGING’, a temporary installation selected for the 2019 LA Design Festival, invokes the ‘Purpose of Joy’, as a reframed response to the festival theme, ‘Design with Purpose’. It brings the activity of uninhibited singing from the privacy of one’s shower, to a public street parking lot, in a dedicated urban, mini ‘singing shower park’. In play and joy, vulnerable boundaries between private and public behaviors dissolve. Using an ‘authorized’ play setting for all ages, it additionally explores ideas about belonging - where and how we feel comfortable to express joy, where we hide, and where we test our private face in public.
Inspired by the context of Los Angeles, the home of performance, the installation is designed as an intergenerational experience, for individual singing, or for couples, families or friends to sing together. Intermingled seating encourages an audience. Sited on a 20’x40’ area of a parking lot, the design includes a landscape assemblage of 12 circular, micro ‘stage’ shower bases, stanchions of varying heights for adults and children, semi-enclosed privacy screens and custom seating. Each waterless shower has a handheld shower ‘microphone’.
The circular language of perforated shower head holes, at varying scales, is a pattern motif for the showers, stages and seating. Privacy screen components transform into light fixtures at night. The affordable installation, designed and built in New York City, was assembled in Los Angeles. Components were prefabricated using cnc, laser, and vacuum forming technologies. Shower heads were vacuum formed and cast from baking pans. Materials included plywood, flexible rubber tubing, schedule 40 plain end plumbing piping and connectors.
The installation inspired immediate smiles, joyful participation, and connected conversations. Post installation, the seating was delivered to a homeless encampment.