Folklife Festival
Washington DC, 2022
Curators: Michele Bambling, Rebecca Fenton
Client: Smithsonian Institute
Organization: Smithsonian Folklife Festival
Director: Sabrina Lynn Motley
Site-Supervision: Tyler Nelson
Program Coordinator: Pablo Molinero
Surface: 450sm
The “spine” is a temporary installation to support the activities of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. The site is located inside the National Mall and borders one of its monumental gardens. The entire installation is 80m long and 2.5m wide. The structure serves as a shading system, to shelter visitors and participants of an event that takes place during the summer season. The spine was born as a succession of temporary spaces, made with natural and reversible materials. Each of its components has not been treated, in order to allow a total reuse of the material at the end of the event. The roof, as well as the sunscreen treatment of the wooden slats, mask the modularity of the intervention. The change in slope of the roof underlines the transition between two distinct activities. The entire 80 meters of the structure were pre-assembled in the factory and transported using only two trailers.
