research and practice
Institute of the Sun is a new project for research and practice in the Mojave Desert, launching in 2024.
The Institute joins Scandinavian traditions with the innovative ethos of the off-grid community in the Mojave Desert, to spearhead creativity, self-sufficiency, resilience, and adaptive solutions through art and practice
The Institute calls attention to the artist as culture producer, specifically engaging with a community who has chosen to live independent of traditional nuclear family structures and Western norms. We wish to articulate a vision for the future through communal practices, where environmental optimisation, multi-purpose architecture and vernacular design is tested, discussed and instituted on site.
The project will launch in a small air stream in the desert in 2024. Through a residency programme, visiting artists and workshops, we will develop tools and insights into off grid living using research and practice to build a tiny house on wheels that will house future residents, exhibitions and workshops.
FASE #1 AirStream Basecamp
The Institute will host a series of workshops, residencies and exhibitions in 2024 testing out ways of living off grid and bringing art outside the conventional framework of the white cube.
These initial experiments will take place in and around the Air Stream Base Camp, which will host the first three artists in residency in 2024 in The Mojave Desert.
FASE # 2
Together with Danish architect Sigurd larsen, the ideas tested out during Fase #1 will form the direction of the tiny house, built with off grid capabilities, to host artists, workshops, studio space and exhibition space in one.
The first renderings of the mobile residency and exhibition space shows a tiny house on wheels with two large mirror walls that are balanced through a tent like structure. The walls and tent roof can be disassembled for transport. Between the reflective walls a public and a private space is provided.
Sigurd Larsen is a Danish architect based in Berlin. He has a master degree from The Royal Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture in Copenhagen. In 2010 he founded Sigurd Larsen Architects, a studio that works in design and architecture combining the aesthetics of high quality materials with concepts focusing on functionality in a complex context.
They are currently building houses and hotels in Denmark, Germany, Austria, France and Greece. Completed projects include a series of loft rooms at Michelberger Hotel in Berlin as well as the treetop hotel Lovtag in Denmark and public schools in Germany. In 2021 they launched a series of tiny house hotel rooms for RAUS in Germany, and using this background, the studio will help design the tiny house.
