The Crater Lake installation is situated in the man-made Port Island, Shiosai Park, a location providing a generous view of the Kobe urban center, its surrounding mountainscape and seascape. The installation seeks to take this unique location into advantage, by creating an undulating wooden landscape that provides a variation of open and unconstrained settings with a 360° viewing vista.
Multiple ideas and materials were tested to realize the complexity of smooth and undulating form. Wood was chosen for its strong structural capacity, ease of work with, and natural qualities. One of the main issues was to express continuous and smooth surface without using costly techniques of wood steaming, bending or digital fabrication. The solution was to divide the circular surface into a number of radial parts, with optimal number of 20 parts. Factors that determined this optimal number were overall surface expression, production schedule, and transportation method (vehicle bedsize). These 20 radial parts were preassembled off the site and transported by a vehicle to the main site of Shiosai Park.
10 x 1,7 meters
Kobe, Japan
Completed September 2011
Design by 24° Studio (Fumio Hirakawa + Marina Topunova)
