Kissing Booth / Shane Neufeld + Rogers Marvel Architects

Courtesy Shane Neufeld + Rogers Marvel Architects

Shane Neufeld and Rogers Marvel Architects have worked together to create Kissing Booth, a progressive warming hut for the Assiniboine River and Winnipeg. Follow after the break for additional rendering, diagrams and a quick description from the designer.

Courtesy Shane Neufeld + Rogers Marvel Architects

Project Concept:

Our design presents an alternative concept for the warming hut: it offers a hut-space which interacts with and is activated by the skaters and the skate path. The design consists of two distinct surfaces — the ground plane, and the path edge/wall – that torque and kiss at their center. This moment of charged contact is at once the peak of their rotation, the spot where their function as a warming hut is realized (in the form of a wall and a roof), and the hut’s structural apex.

Courtesy Shane Neufeld + Rogers Marvel Architects

The surfaces –which frame the skate path — rotate in response to the trajectory of the skater as they move from skating to sitting and back again. Further these dual surfaces are not really surfaces at all, but a series of beams which, although angular in nature suggest a complex curvature by means of a simple rotation process. The design employs the building module of dimensional lumber studs to achieve a visual play of light and shadow, motion, and ultimately shelter. The only elements which are not inherently a part of this beam-surface structure are the components of comfort for the visitor which exist at the structure’s core- a bench for rest, and a window which frames the landscape. The Kissing Booth offers the visitor a dynamic skating-shelter experience.