Living room sweet living room by Jasmine

Tired? Have a rest at the world’s largest living room...outside your house.

Image taken from http://www.longville.ch/m-galerie.php

Located at St. Gallen, Switzerland, a collaboration project by architect Carlos Martinez and visual artist Pipilotti Rist

Nothing complicated. This project is just about having an ultra big piece of red carpet rolled out, spreading throughout the whole Bleicheli District.

BUT, it is a big piece of red carpet with protruding tables, benches, chairs, sofas, fountains, cars and some funny objects that are left for your imagination. 

For your information, Bleicheli District in St Gallen is a central business district (CBD) and like any other financial business district in the world, it is filled with a good concentration of retail and office buildings. 

And also for your information, CBD is ranked the least appealing place to work in my list. Formal wears, corporal name cards, 9am to 6pm, mondays to fridays (sometimes saturdays), clients, phone calls, staff ID card, rigid bosses, the general list of goes on. You will never want to imagine yourself relaxing in such an area. However, this piece of art successfully transformed Bleicheli District into a 24-hour accessible leisure, relaxation, and business oasis. The red carpet effect invites you to linger and offer a perfect setting for meet-ups. Glowing lamps suspended overhead, bathing the neighbourhood in diverse, subtly changing lighting moods. 

Image taken from http://freshome.com/2008/05/28/the-largest-public-living-room-city-lounge/

So, what is the "red carpet effect" that I'm talking about? A red carpet is traditionally used to mark the route taken by heads of state on ceremonial and formal occasions. In recent decades, it has been extended to VIPs and even to celebrities at formal events. In other words, if you are welcomed by the red carpet, then you must be a somebody rather important. In current general interpretation, when one say the "red carpet treatment" or "rolling out the red carpet", it refers to any special efforts made in the interests of hospitality. [1]

The choice of colour and material within the Bleicheli District has a positive side effect towards visitors who patron the red zone. E.g. drivers making their way through the lounge will have to act more carefully towards their surroundings as well as the pedestrians. 

Also, what was once designed as an over-sized open air living room does not only make people living here sleep less, but their nerves are all on edge too. Just a little history of what had image Bleicheli District had portrayed before coming to the hands of the two designers. Previously in St Gallen newspaper,  the problem with the district is always parties till late night littering. In a radio feature, Swiss radio station DRS once called the District a "place to be avoided", and local innkeepers are suffering from low patronage. [2] After the revamp, people certainly overlap this space as an alternative of their personal living room. You do not want to destroy your own relaxation space, do you?  

Switzerland has a good reputation abroad, despite the clichés about the wealth of neutrality, discretion, Swiss cheese or other golden reserves. Last, but not least this reputation has been backed up by a study carried through by the Hochschulinstitut für öffentliche Verwaltung (IDHEAP) (college institute of public administration). However, the fact that the Swiss are capable of more than being able to keep things to themselves has been given proof of by the Raiffeisenbank through re-designing the Bleicheli District in St. Gallen. ”The architecture is a supporting pillar of Raiffeisen’s corporate identity“, says Martin Kaiser in 2005, Raiffeisenbank’s principal’s consultant. The same year, the Raiffeisen superstructure has taken over a major part of the Bleicheli Quarter. [2]

The logic result was to create a connective element of the building through cultivating the free areas. Martinez and Rist's idea of a “city lounge” has nothing to do with any clichés of neutrality, which is particularly true of the coloring.

source:

[1] Red Carpet. (n.d.). in Wikipedia. Retrieved on 12 July 2012 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_carpet


[2] Galinski, A. (2011, Dec 01). Mapholis architecture. Of coolly caculated art: Carols Martinez- St. Gallen City LoungeRetrieved on 12 July 2012 from http://architecture.mapolismagazin.com/carlos-martinez-st-gallen-city-lounge-st-gallen 

Sharifi Amin. (2011, May 10). My Landscape. St Gallen, Switzerland. Retrieved on 12 July 2012 from http://landscapeissharifi.blogspot.jp/2011/05/st-gallen-switzerland.html.