Gigabed

A bedroom on tall legs that you reach only by ladder. Once you are up there you are visible to everyone and at the same time out of reach — which is exactly the tension the piece is about.

What it is about

The Gigabed puts social media up for discussion: the idea that the technology should be available to everyone, always. Here you shelter from that digital demandingness instead. What is left is offline: pillow fights, and lying on your back looking at the stars.

At the same time the structure plays with the loss of privacy that comes with those media. The walls are made of transparent corrugated sheeting, so your curtain is not a curtain at all. You see everything, and everyone sees you — with the difference that here you climbed up yourself.

How it is built

The load-bearing structure is made of azobé mooring posts — timber that stood in water before and grew hard and heavy there. Beyond that the structure consists largely of reused parts that have already had a second or third life and that will find a further purpose after the campsite. Not a temporary set that ends up in a skip afterwards, but an interim stage in the life of the material.

Collaboration

Designed and built together with Edgars Rozkalns, supervised by Wouter Valkenier of Studio Valkenier, for Urban Campsite Amsterdam. The bed could be booked through the campsite: you could genuinely sleep in it.