Cat-à-Tête
Exhibited at the Herman Miller showroom in Los Angeles and designed with Akrtura and BuroHappold, Cat-à-Tête is Formation Association’s 2016 contribution to ‘Architects for Animals: Giving Shelter’, an exhibit of architect-designed feral cat shelters.
Cat-à-Tête is a feral cat shelter which takes the form of a tête-à-tête, an S-shaped seat allowing face-to-face conversation, the structure of which provides a social framework for cats and humans alike.
Cats enter the Cat-à-Tête structure through various openings, escaping their would-be predators. The soft, protected interior is spatially organized in a continuous figure 8 circuit offering areas of rest, play, and observation.
The structure of Cat-à-Tête is comprised of a sustainable sheet material typically used for acoustical applications. It is light, soft, and geometrically stable. Though possessing the visual and tactile properties of felt, the material is composed largely of recycled plastic bottles, and is in turn completely recyclable.
Parametrically defined sectional ribs are fabricated from the sheet material and laminated together, creating a composite structural action across the serial section volume. Alternating ribs and open slots allow the rhythmic infiltration of light to move across textured interior spaces.
The binary nature of Cat-à-Tête's serial construction points to the binary relationship between feral cats and humans - While the two may not cross-paths when visiting Cat-à-Tête, the structure's form suggests an on-going inter-species dialogue through repeated binary alternation.
Exhibited at the Herman Miller showroom in Los Angeles, Cat-à-Tête is Formation Association’s 2016 contribution to ‘Architects for Animals: Giving Shelter’, an exhibit of architect-designed feral cat shelters.
Designed by Formation Association in collaboration with Arktura and BuroHappold. A video on Cat-à-Tête was produced by Stephen Schauer.
