Istanbul – Tri-Fold installation by Alper Derinboğaz at the Volkswagen Arena Lounge

by Federica Lusiardi, Inexhibit

Tri-Fold, designed by Alper Derinboğaz for the Volkswagen Arena Lounge in Istanbul – a multifunctional venue for concerts and public events – is a dynamic installation conceived to create a dialogue with the surrounding space and its visitors, at the same time providing reception, orientation and communication services. Its soft and fluid shape becomes seat, wall and ceiling in succession.

The project was developed by Derinboğaz-led studio Salon architects in collaboration with Antilop Media Design, which designed exclusive multimedia content for the Volkswagen Arena, transmitted by three touch-screen monitors positioned around the structure.

Made in plywood, Tri-Fold has not been conceived as an entity separated from the surrounding space, but as an element which integrates with such space, and establishes high-quality functional and spatial relationships with it.

As seen in other works by Salon, such as “Modalities of spontaneous” – the exhibition designed by Alper Derinboğaz at the 14th Venice Architecture Biennale (already featured on Inexhibit), the Turkish practice has created a complex shape based on a parametric composition of discrete geometrical units, in this case flat plywood sheets.

If you are thinking that these kinds of structure are all made by the means of computers after all, please have a closer look at the wood bars which connect the profiles to one another, or at the joints between the different plywood sheets that form each flat shape. Well, let me say you need very skilful craft workers to achieve such remarkable manufacturing quality.