SCENES

This is a design and build project for the biannual Community Theatre Festival presented by Drama Box at the open field next to NEX at Serangoon. The 2015 festival was the largest since it started as it was meant to also celebrate Drama Box’s 15^th anniversary and to officially launch their unique touring inflatable pop-up theatre – GoLi – The Moving Theatre. 

This project was conceived as a series of environmental receptors to form five installations that can react to the little wonders in our environment, such as the sky, breeze, rain and light.  They intend to spread and invite the participation of the public to engage in the investment of kindness; culture of sharing and the simple joy in reconnecting ourselves to people and environment through appreciation of daily nuances.

These installations forming the identity of this festival are connected by a main scaffold structure to gather a series of functional spaces such as a promenade leading to the playground, outdoor stage, exhibition space and stores.

The five installations consist of Under the Cloud, Plant Folks, Wind Whispers, Whisperer Ensemble and the Palette Agents. They attained their lives through re-adaptation of daily objects.

Under the cloud is a series of umbrellas forming the entrance and the promenade to the festival. At the same time, they also work functionally as shelter to the sun and rain, framing up the sky and creating rhythms to the spaces. One of the feature of Under the Cloud is the Raining Umbrellaswhich rained intermittently underneath the umbrellas to provide an unexpected space for the people to play and cool down. 

Wind Whisperers are kitchen utensils that can spin and dance with the wind. They form a forest of dancing windmills whispering to the public as the wind comes.

Whisper Ensemble is a dot matrix signage of the festival forming the word SCENES which will only reveal itself as one walk towards it at the right position. The dots are made up of wind whisperers and metal plates that can spin in the wind.

Plant Folks are planters that look like human beings. They are made of used clothing to form planters for edible plants to grow. This is part of an initiative to involve the community in this festival where they participated in growing and adopting these plants before and after the festival.

Pallets Agents are stalls designed using used wooden pallets for participating social enterprises to sell their merchandise during the festival. These palettes are very flexible to create different spatial configurations for different stalls and needs.

Besides the tent structure and the scaffolding, this project was entirely hand-crafted and built by the students.