R.05
PLAY ROOM

Type:
Exhibition

Role:
Design, Fabrication

Location:
Keller gallery, M.I.T.

Date:
February 2020

For:
Ana Miljacki’s Critical Broadcasting Lab

With assistance from:
Trevor Nathaniel Herman Hilker, Jung In Seo, Sacha Moreau, Chris Dewart


PLAY ROOM is an exhibition of architectural games by the Critical Broadcasting Lab. I designed and fabricated the exhibition over 6 weeks in January 2020.

PLAY ROOM is furnished with folding, transportable games tables, which store knock-down stools and lamps. Through their deployability, materiality, and construction details, the pieces speak to a lineage of furniture that has defined the military encampment, the Victorian parlour, the casino and the corporate board room.

The table and the chest and the chair are cultural objects re-deployed across empire as instruments of power. The folding desk, for example, was a mainstay of military and colonial campaigns, from ancient Rome to the 19th century. Various folding mechanisms facilitate this deployment: in PLAY ROOM, the custom hardware, powder coated pink, calls upon and ironizes this history.

The green felt of the games table emerged out of the Industrial Revolution: the Factory Acts of 1833 and 1844, which regulated the work hours of children and women, precipitated socialized leisure activities. Folding games afforded this new found free time; they can be read as constructs of class consciousness, reform ideology, extractive economics, and the colonial apparatus. Games tables often used “exotic” woods and textiles from colonized territories - the Mahjong parlor and the Victorian parlor meet at the felted green surface.

While PLAY ROOM’s furniture works-through these histories of materialized power and protocol, its color, shape and proportion also invite youthful abandon. The sitting height of the table and stool are calibrated to induce the slight hunch of an adult engaged in child’s play.



01. installation


02. installation


03. med. table

04. lrg. table

05. sm. table


06. hinge detail


07. lamp detail


08. handle detail


09. unpacking

10. contained parts


11. packed valises

01. concept diagram


02. hinge detail


03. socket block detail


04. research detail


05. research detail


06. research detail


07. research detail


08. research detail

09. research detail