Opening Celebration
Please join us for an opening celebration at 6:00pm on Wednesday, August 15.
Pop Rocks is an innovative architectural installation that uses recycled materials to transform the 800-block of Robson Street in downtown Vancouver into a playful social space from August 15 until September 3, 2012.
Designed by Matthew Soules Architecture and AFJD Studio (Joe Dahmen & Amber Frid-Jimenez), and sponsored by the City of Vancouver’s Viva Vancouver program, Pop Rocks deploys fifteen large pillow-like forms across an entire city block to create a soft landscape that offers comfortable seating while creating a monumental presence at the centre of the city. Visitors are invited to relax and play on and among the unique shapes and enveloping spaces of this provocative installation.
Pop Rocks is radically sustainable, embodying the City of Vancouver’s ambition to become the greenest city in the world by 2020. The installation is constructed entirely from re-used materials that will be recycled at the end of the project. Each of the soft forms is made using fabric from Canada Place’s ‘Sails’ – which became available after the tensile roof’s recent refurbishment. Pieces of the roof were sewn by a local sailmaker into shapes that were filled with recycled polystyrene beads provided by Mansonville Plastics, a company that recycles polystyrene from throughout Metro Vancouver.
Pop Rocks repurposes these waste materials in a provocative manner that demonstrates the potential of creative design to enliven the urban experience for all Vancouverites while reducing our collective ecological footprint.
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Design Team
AFJD Studio (Amber Frid-Jimenez & Joe Dahmen)
AFJD Studio is a design firm that uses sustainable methods to engage contemporary cultural issues. Trained at MIT, principals Joe Dahmen and Amber Frid-Jimenez design intimate and urban-scale installations with materials as diverse as rammed earth, micro-algae, and computer code. Working independently and in collaboration, they have designed buildings, founded startup companies and large-scale participatory media networks. Frid-Jimenez is an award-winning designer and Associate Professor at Emily Carr University and has a Master of Media Arts and Sciences from the MIT Media Lab, where she studied with John Maeda. Dahmen is Assistant Professor of Design and Sustainability Integration at the UBC School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture and a Faculty Associate of the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies. He holds a Master of Architecture from MIT.
Matthew Soules Architecture Inc.
Matthew Soules Architecture (MSA) is an award winning design and research firm that works on diverse projects which stretch the boundaries of architectural practice while addressing the critical socio-cultural issues of the 21st Century. Matthew Soules holds a Master of Architecture from Harvard University, is an Assistant Professor at UBC’s School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture and has been an invited design critic at numerous institutions including the Rhode Island School of Design, MIT and the Pratt Institute. MSA has received numerous awards for its innovative work, including the Architectural Institute of British Columbia’s ‘Emerging Firm Award’ in 2010 and the Washington, DC – based International Downtown Association’s ‘Pinnacle Award,’ its highest honour for contributions to public space. Soules’ writing and design work have been widely published, including in journals such as Harvard Design Magazine, Metropolis, and Canadian Architect.
Project Team
- Jen Boyle
- Byron Chiang
- Joe Dahmen
- Amber Frid-Jimenez
- Baktash Ilbeiggi
- Warren Scheske
- Matthew Soules, MAIBC
- Derreck Travis
Sponsors
- Mansonville Plastics
- Architecture for Humanity
- Abbotsford Concrete Products
- Synlawn
- University of British Columbia School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture
Structural Engineer
- Bevan-Pritchard Man
Client
- Viva Vancouver, City of Vancouver
Fabrication and Construction
- Evolution Sails
- Mansonville Plastics
- Sail Bright Coast
