Departamento del Distrito

Solar Picnic

For their contribution to the Altered Origins architectural symposium at Rice University, Departamento del Distrito wanted to put participants face to face with the largely unseen energy and technological infrastructures that enable the everyday goings on around campus. Happily for us, they commissioned Feast Day to document the entire tour-turned-experimental-workshop.

The Creative Brief

A Spark of Inspiration

Despite organizing a resolutely exploratory workshop, Departamento del Distrito wanted to ground their concept in a theoretical precedent. As such, their solar picnic concept was loosely inspired by the iconic 1970’s “Supersurface” collage project by speculative Italian architectural firm Superstudio (seen below). As such, they asked us to create images that subtly nodded to the overall look and feel of this earlier collection of images and ideas. Bright. Sunny. High-contrast. Grid-tastic. You get the picture.

Visual reference images from the 1970’s “Supersurface” project by Superstudio.

A picnic in two parts

Underground, Around, and Back Again

The day began with a behind-the-scenes exploration of the university’s central power plant, natural gas turbines, cooling towers, and underground energy distribution system.

Part 1: A comprehensive foray into Rice University’s energy infrastructure.

Light. Vittles. Action.

Solar-Powered Playtime

Riding the high of gallivanting across the grid, we ventured back outside and broke out the checkered blankets for the main event: an experimental ‘solar picnic’. The idea here was to ply folks with food, drink, and solar-powered gizmos to see how people would then interact—with the sun, the tech, and one another. The result was a frenzy of impromptu collective invention fueled in equal measure by the blazing sun, glazed donuts, and digital devices.

Participants engineering wearable (and not-so-wearable) solar-powered technologies.

As Departmento del Distrito puts it more eloquently, ‘workshop participants tested a range of portable solar panel modules, exploring alternative, small-scale strategies for renewable energy production to generate new forms of collectivity.‘

Client: Deptartamento del Distrito. (with support from Rice University)
Photography: Feast Day
Producer: Feast Day

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