WORK
OFFICE

SOFTSITE

MAKING (MATERIALS) GOOD
COMPETITION PROPOSAL FOR A BUS SHELTER AND TOILET
TALLINN ARCHITECTURE BIENNIAL
WITH AMELYN NG
TALLINN, 2024

The architecture discipline has many hang-ups, and what counts as “proper”—what counts as “architecture”—is one of its most contested terrains: When is matter “dirt” and when is it “material”? When is a frame “structure” and when is it “architecture”? When is a project “finished”? What role do concepts such as container, surface, and finish play in such distinctions? Through acts of choreographed metamorphosis, SOFTSITE thus critically investigates the sliding scale between a provisional architecture and architecture proper.

SOFTSITE is an architectural investigation into the speculative storage, collective custodianship, and slow transformation of salvaged materials into objects of value and, ultimately, into architecture, through acts of “making good.” It is also a bus shelter and toilet. Designed to address the art publics of the Tallinn Architecture Biennale and the transportation publics and workers of Tallinn Baltic Station, SOFTSITE supports materials and bodies at rest, while exploring the acts that make “stuff” a “material” and materials an “architecture.”

Performed on site and in public, the project has three phases: it starts as a SLOW DEPOT dedicated to exploring techniques of “making good”; it is then extended, grounded, and reclad, and its contents formalized into furniture and finishes to become a TRANSIT KIOSK; finally, a cyclical and seasonal process of DRESSING UP/DRESSING DOWN runs alongside the other two phases, allowing the pavilion to stage new experiments in line with other rhythms of ritualized renewal.

The SOFTSITE proposal was produced in collaboration with Amelyn Ng, short-listed and exhibited at the Tallinn Architecture Biennale in Fall 2024.