Seattle Jelly Bean PRAUD
The world is filled with objects and I like it. The object is the things we hold, the thing we grasp on to. But ‘ no object is an island’. The thing we see has so much imbedded behind it that, in the end, is probably what attracts us to the object in the first place. Thus the object becomes secondary, almost as a screen upon which certain ideals that attract us, are projected. The Jelly Bean by PRAUD is an urban intervention for Seattle that presents itself as object, but is ultimately legible as first the sum (and then some) of its divisors and then the object.
Courtesy of PRAUD
A dichotomy of void and solid set up movement patterns through the site. Movement and distillation are resultants on one another- inversions. Passages are conceived as solids around which courts, seen as voids, are divined. In a very natural, almost erosional manner, pedestrians and joggers move and thus create circumstances for differing functions and landscapes throughout the park.
And here comes the object. The Jelly Bean, say PRAUD, ‘is a floating object that generates various interactions between park visitors, publics at Center Core and communities in distance.’ Able to affect climate at a micro scale, inducing fog, cloud, rain, or sunshine- it creates atmosphere figuratively and literally. And it is a way-finder. From this airborne bean one can see reflected or projected images of and from the city. Likewise, from the city one can find the park and one’s place relative to Seattle as a whole.
Project : Urban Intervention Competition
Year : 2012
Location : Seattle, US
Program : Landscape, Park
Result : Finalist (3 teams)
