Through the Rabbit Hole

Within the rabid urban development and fast-paced cities of Chongqing, more and more inner-city dwellers share a prevalent symptom of depression from being in the speedy, ridiculous, and fragmented urban life. This project explores the threshold between work/urban oppression and play/self-release through the creation of an interactive installation as a guideline towards a comfort zone.

With awareness of the issue of neglected spaces in a rapidly developing urban context, we chose to focus on a neglected underground tunnel, which is located parallel to the Jinjuan Commercial Street at Guanyinqiao area. The existing tunnel connects the outside commercial world to a secretive and incidental video arcade room. Under the guidance of an interactive lighting system, users are encouraged to explore the structural transformation from rectangular form to irregular circular from, from geometric to organic, monochromatic to poly-chromatic; which symbolizes the process of shifting from social restraints to freedom of self-release.

The team consisted of 5 students, whom all took part in the design. Other than design, my other responsibilities were modeling, drafting/drawings, and rendering.

Design Attributes

The form and interactive qualities were heavily influenced by both the outdoors and the arcade. Because the design acts as a portal from the urban lifestyle of the outdoors to the carefree playful aspect of the inside, the design starts off with a rectangular form and as it gets closer to the arcade, it slowly morphs in to an organic form. Color also plays a part. We noticed that the outdoor had a cold color tone, while the inside of the arcade had various vibrant colors. So to play with that concept, the beginning of the tunnel utilizes one or two color values and as the user progresses through the “portal” the color begins to shift into more vibrant and various colors to complement the arcade/destination. When the user leaves the arcade, he/she walks from the vibrant colors back to the monochromaticism of the outdoors.

Interactive System

Using a series of IR sensors, as the user walks past each interactive column, the column’ s LEDs follow the user and light up the pathway. Different color schemes can be incorporated as well as different flashing methods (fading, pulsing, gradients, etc).