TankView.pdx - Curated by Merge Studio Lab

Full description

In this project the roof-mounted water tanks are coupled with photography to capture fragments of Portland's perpetually unfolding cityscape. As an enclosed space surrounded by light the water tank is a ready-made camera-obscura, a dark room requiring only a small opening in one wall to fill the space with light and capture images of the surrounding city. By inserting a series of photographic surfaces and web cameras within the tank, the captured panoramic scenes can be permanently recorded on a variety of media and re-presented back in any number of ways. Images may be transferred onto metal, plastic or steel surfaces and wrapped around the tower, lit from behind to glow like 'windows' at night, printed full-scale on fabric and draped like clothing, or mounted as billboards throughout the city and beyond. The digital files can be uploaded and integrated with open-source virtual globes such as Google Earth, so that anyone globally can view Portland from the perspective of the tanks - a position somewhere between the aerial view and StreetView, a 'TankView' situated within the urban fabric. Eight towers in the central city are suggested for reuse in this proposal, but the strategy is transferrable across any elevated type. Ultimately the tanks are repurposed to capture a 'twin' city that can be presented back onto itself in place, or distributed across a series of local and remote 'sites'. 1st place award for competition entry repurposing water storage facilities in Portland, Oregon