SNARKITECTURE
FLOATING FOREST
DE BIJENKORF AMSTERDAM
Inspired by winter forests and snowfall, Snarkitecture created a three-dimensional floating forest in the main atrium of the de Bijenkorf flagship store. Three hundred and sixty artificial, all-white trees are suspended in a voxel grid, playing on the relationship between nature and order. As patrons move around the department store, the optical illusion of the moiré effect creates a series of patterns as the trees visually collapse and expand. The installation invites visitors to move around the suspended forest, creating a sense of wonder and abstraction as they glimpse other people and the surrounding architecture through the trees.
SNARKITECTURE BIOGRAPHY
Snarkitecture is a New York-based collaborative practice established to investigate the boundaries between art and architecture. Snarkitecture’s work focuses on the reinterpretation of everyday materials, structures and programs to new and imaginative effect. With a conceptual approach centered on the importance of experience, the studio creates unexpected and memorable moments that invite people to explore and engage with their surroundings. By transforming the familiar into the extraordinary, Snarkitecture makes architecture perform the unexpected.
Snarkitecture is a collaboration by artist Daniel Arsham, architect Alex Mustonen and architect Benjamin Porto. The name is drawn from Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of The Snark, a poem describing the “impossible voyage of an improbable crew to find an inconceivable creature.” In its search for the unknown, Snarkitecture creates architectural-scale projects, installations, and objects.
