Constellations
The team: City3 + Atelier Starzak Strebicki + Laura Muyldermans developed and implemented a design consisting of 100 chairs, 10 tables and 50 plants that will be assembled and tested in a series of different configurations. From July 2016 until August 2017, Constellations will explore the use of the furniture in various sections of the Esplanade and observe and study the different ways the public interacts with the furniture and its surroundings.
In spring 2016, the European Parliament (EP) commissioned a design for temporary creative street furniture and greenery for the Esplanade Solidarność 1980, the main thoroughfare that links the different buildings of the Parliament campus in Brussels.
With Constellations, instead of designing temporary furniture, City3 in collaboration with Atelier Starzak Strebicki and Laura Muyldermans however proposed the EP to invest in a set of 100 chairs, 10 tables and 50 plants. With the design project becoming a research project, allowing to arrange and test the chairs, tables and plants during one year in various configurations.
A group of circles, a long line, several small clusters, a series of stars: throughout one year, the chairs, tables and plants, in a variety of colors in order to avoid any form of pre-definition, are re-arranged in various ways and installed in different parts and sections of the Esplanade. They turn the vast space into a scene for a colorful play in which the chairs and tables and the people using them become the actors. The Esplanade becomes a convivial, people-oriented and friendly public space, but at the same time also an object of study in which the different ways the public interacts with the furniture and with the space of which it is part can be observed and explored.
