Public social space is all around us and permanently changing. iLOUNGE a design built intervention in public space for Northern Spark in Minneapolis and for the ZERO1 San Jose Biennial in 2012 offers an instant social stage to create a temporary community for a minute, an hour or an evening. iLOUNGE operates as a social catalyst for place-making by creating new connections with the existing city while engaging information technology to augment or alter social interactions in public space.

As defined by spatial sociologist Martina Loew (Spacing, Raumsoziologie, 2001) the user is an active part of the spatial production. iLOUNGE has the ambition of being an urban space that interacts with its inhabitants: a space that adapts to the needs of the citizens but also a space that stimulates citizens to look, listen, exchange, reflect, and to relax. iLOUNGE is instant, interim and interactive and predominately refers to Ia am.

The design suggests a dynamic and adaptive carpet, a topography that embraces and stimulates exchange as well as interaction. The configuration is intended to change the speed and the direction of its inhabitants, to get them to interact, slow down, look in different directions, and generate informal interactions to promote different types of urban life. The architectural modules offer a surface that supports the occupation of the human body in multiple ways: lounging, standing, resting, socializing, exchanging, playing, observing, and being observed. These programs are supported by the application of different materials: fur, wood, and foam all monochromatic in order to clearly identify the interim implementation. The inhabitable sculpture motivates the creation of a temporary community in flux. Analog and Digitally mediated narratives that trigger interaction and are embedded in the spatial construct provide a new context for social and physical exchange; they create a new set of potential for the social and sensorial relations, as well as space atmospheres. iLOUNGE is a public furniture, but more so we consider it as living, behavioral matter. They encourage the creation of interim communities that coexist in the physical and digital space.

iLOUNGE performed in June 2012 in Minneapolis during Northern Spark and will be presented at the ZERO1 Biennial opening weekend from the 14th to the 16th of September. For this event iLOUNGE will operate as a public stage programmed with media art events that conceptualize the interactivity of iLOUNGE. Among those Fast Map_A Portable Digital Mapping Tool by Mark Campos (CCA BArch 2012) showing the fastest way to extract usable cartographic information from a permanently changing space in the city. And QRspace_A Real Time Interactive Environment by David Gastaneta (CCA BArch 2013) acting as a responsive virtual environment that allows visitors from the iLOUNGE to apply material surfaces to the topography of the public space via QRcode applications and activations. A third artist will be selected via an open call this current August.