HOT HUT
winnipeg, manitoba (Competition Entry)
In today’s age of drones, selfie sticks, and digital maps, our surroundings are easily viewed and captured from all angles. This unrelenting documentation has the tendency to flatten our three-dimensional world into two-dimensional imagery. HOT HUT plays on this fascinating duality of perception and representation.
Visitors approaching HOT HUT from ground level perceive three separate, geometric wood volumes, forming a grouping of abstract, inhabitable furniture pieces. Visitors viewing the piece from more elevated vantage points, such as pedestrians crossing a bridge or flying drones, will experience the installation differently, literally reading the word “HOT” as black letters on white snow.
Playing on the rich history of text and superscript in art and design, the use of the word “HOT” in the context of a frozen landscape initially appears purely tongue-and-cheek, a joke about how cold it actually is (or, inversely, a sobering statement about our warming planet)—and yet, the black-stained wood will attract and retain heat, providing a (relatively!) “hot” installation for visitors to engage with. The vertical extrusions of the lettering shield visitors from wind, while a series of nooks and alcoves, and seating with various angles of recline, provide a variety of scales of spaces for gathering, playing, interacting, and lounging.
While the two-dimensional legibility of the word HOT will undergo various states of erasure and re-writing as the snow collects and melts on its surface, its three-dimensional presence will remain unchanged.
Team: Aleris Rodgers, Francesco Valente-Gorjup
Bird’s eye view
Plan
Elevation A
Section B - Through the letter “H”
Section C - Through the letter “T”
Plan and Section details
Erasure and re-writing - as the snow falls