Atelier Bow-Wow's Manga-pod
A few days in Sydney
I was in Sydney for a few days in September for a brief holiday. This is the first post in this series.
Visiting Sydney from Melbourne has become similar to visiting Singapore from KL. The annual pilgrimage to a (heaven forbid) sister city. I like Sydney (despite being a Melburnian) just as I like Singapore (despite being a KL-ite).
My first day in Sydney, I was taken the queer district of Oxford Street, also associated with the designer community. In a curious protrusion nestled between taller buildings, I discovered Object Gallery.
One of the exhibits there was Atelier Bow-Wow's Manga-pod. I heard Atelier Bow-Wow had something up on display in Melbourne but I had missed it, but a few weeks later I have this chance encounter in Sydney!
Ahem... observe the cute space it provides for the serious manga-fan - with the warmth and honesty of timber. (I'm not sure if the person inside is a manga fan... but anyway...)
The Tokyo based atelier established by Yoshiharu Tsukamoto and Momoyo Kaijima has received much attention from the design community in Australia both in Sydney and Melbourne. Their work, which has been invariably described as 'pet-architecture', often sit in neglected or awkward spaces.
The media on the shelves arranged randomly adds another dimension to the structure. The media it holds completes it and accentuates the architecture by giving it function. The simple idea and design is unassuming yet not uninteresting. These small spaces remind me of the work an architecture student undertakes in his/her early years, when ideas of a person within a space is explored - when one begins to fathom what scale is in relation to the human body.
The Manga-pod is an ergonomically considered structure which brings you within its embrace. Manga-pod is a variant of the atelier's Media-pod, but bigger. Supposedly, you are supposed to lose yourself in the virtual manga universe within the confines of this space and emerge from it after happier and manga-fied.
Will post more about my brief sojourn to Sydney soon... watch this space.