Parallel Motion: Walden pond
Research Project
Location : Concord, USA
Design Period : November, 2013
Design Team: Jinhyun Jun
The initial design reference for Walden pond is Henry David Thoreau's essay, 'Walden'. In his writing, he conveys the attitude of life which is communing and living with nature minimum possessions. This contrasts to the western ideology of that age (also today)that divided nature and human, city as an evil and nature as a good, and suggests modest viewpoint to nature to contemporary people. One of the main lessons of this essay is: nature is not an object of conquer, and human being has to perceive himself as a part of it. However, this is cliche which is somewhat difficult to be practiced.
The island has been borrowed in Asian garden design that often represented nature itself. It was kind of media connects nature and people by enabling them to meditate within it. Again, it is borrowed from the eastern ideology to talk about 'Thoreau's lesson'.
I propose floating object that can be adapted into nature completely by following natural phenomena such as blowing wind, flowing water, changing time and growing living things. The object fallows wind, water, and sometimes dissolves to nature as time goes on. Also, in terms of functional aspect, it operates in the complicated eco-system in accordance with mechanism of nature to pursue biodiversity of the Walden pond.
