“We used to look up at the sky and wonder at our place in the stars, now we just look down and worry about our place in the dirt.”

——《星际穿越》Interstellar

Wutopia Lab was commissioned by TOPYS in collaboration with Roboticplus.AI to inaugurate a magical realism installation with 3D printing on Star Square in Shanghai Wanxiang City, Arrival. It is also an attempt of Wutopia Lab’s project of reviving urban micro spaces.

Star Square is sandwiched between the back of Viacom and the north parking garage, with a subway entrance and exit on the square. Turning into a purely traffic site, TOPYS wanted to invite Wutopia Lab to create an installation here that would activate sociality and activate the Star Square. Since there is a subway underneath the Star Plaza, the floor slab has a load capacity of only 3.5KN per square meter. TOPYS also wanted the social installation to be functional and indicative. The budget is around 500,000 RMB.

▼项目概览，general view of the project ©CreatAR Images

I stood in the middle of the Star Plaza and felt a little confused. The sense of place here stripped away everything I knew. The place was not Shanghai, it was as if I was standing in some vague location in any city, not even at that point in 2021. This feeling inspired me to explore some possibilities of futurism and science fiction. I decided to re-define an ambiguous site by implanting a definite Palladium in an ambiguous site in the manner of Marguerite or Roland Emmerich. It also had to have the maximum volume that the budget would allow, and in the uncertain daylight of Shanghai, black became my very choice. I decided to design a light huge black BDO.

▼一个轻的巨大的黑色的BDO，a light huge black BDO ©CreatAR Images

▼植入一个明确的帕拉图体去重新明确一个模糊的场地，re-defining an ambiguous site by implanting a definite Palladium in an ambiguous site ©CreatAR Images