PRESS RELEASE July 2nd 2013 ATMOS UNVEIL A DRAMATIC NEW DIGITALLY-CREATED INSTALLATION - AN INHABITABLE TREE FOR THE

CITY OF LONDON FESTIVAL - THE MOBILE ORCHARD - LONDON -

Overview
The Mobile Orchard is a new public installation by atmos - an inhabitable hymn to the urban fruit tree, commissioned as the centrepiece for the City of London Festival. Its exuberant design celebrates the wonder of trees, and offers a magical mutation - a welcoming structure tailored to humans. The project seeks to create a new kind of public landscape that merges the best of man-made design and organic nature. It offers a labyrinth of complex, intriguing, generous spaces that seek to nourish all the senses - celebrating both natural trees, and the communion of cities.

It centres on a large, sculptural timber oasis that doubles as immersive summer street furniture morphing into seating, shelter, stairway and sky-throne. Its undulating roots offer a landscape for lounging, including sinuous benches and molten armchairs that cradle the gaze upwards through the hollow trunk. Massive branches worm outwards from a dramatically leaning trunk to offer further seats, splaying to form steps that flow upwards to a branch-clad throne at the tip. A lightweight latticework of aluminium unfurls from the laminated plywood grains to support a canopy of laser-cut leaves - each blade a local London borough, with the host borough further subdivided into wards - the blossom and seeds of the project. Electric LED lighting threads through its veins, uniting base and crown, its sinuous lines like sectioncuts that graphically describe the segments of its core geometry, terminating in glowing bulbs of moon-light spots.

The installation is edible - cradling a constellation of real apples, refreshed daily, that are ripe for the plucking by any member of the public. It is accompanied by a choir of young fruit trees that, like the modular nature of the tree itself, will grow over time, awaiting a future in schools and orchards across London. The project will host a series of events and performances, including specially-commissioned theatre and music, a Fruit-Feast dinner and an Urban Picnic of gleaned fruit and veg from the team at Feeding the 5,000. The Orchard moves each week to a new venue in the City of London before its young live trees are distributed to schools and orchards across London, and its sculptural centrepiece donated to Trees for Cities, who will tour it across Britain for 5 years.

Designer's Statement
The design of the Mobile Orchard furthers atmos's ongoing investigations of natural forms, organic structures, experiential ergonomics, digital fabrication, and innovative public landscapes. In homage to the surfaces of its modernist host borough, the design originally proposed lightweight interlocking laser-cut steel sheets, using curved folds to economically achieve large spans. The evolution on towards a plywood solution developed for reasons of both cost and comfort, offering a warmer and more welcoming series of surfaces for the public to enjoy; the design of the secondary branches retains the only trace of the original curved-fold sheet metal design. Though natural in form, the project is centrally about people and interaction, collectivity - and cities. Its forms ape humans, moulded to their bodies, mirroring their movements. Its branches offer its visitors food, and will host a range of eating events - a core interest of the studio, whose director created Latitudinal Cuisine and Global Feast for the Olympics, merging design with fine-dining, stimulating mind and body. Its entirety is intended to challenge and inspire, to enhance the public realm, and encourage exploration, play and interaction. The installation was parametrically designed using scripts and algorithms that explore the mathematical rules of growth so brilliantly exemplified by nature, enabling an unprecedented level of highly-resolved complexity. Its intense digitality complements atmos's intricate knowledge of analogue detail and construction, and several members of the atmos team helped build the structure. "This project was a unique opportunity for us to really grapple with the extraordinary beauty and complexity of trees. We've been designing projects that reference them - whether explicitly or unconsciously - for years, but never had the chance to share the stage with them, until now. Our initial arboreal research into tree growth patterns and geometries was extensive and productive, and helped us literally grow this project from seed. Just as a tree benefits from a multitude of nutrients to aid its growth, we have benefitted from an extraordinary ecology of people and organisations, who have all played a vital symbiotic role in helping bring this project to life." Alex Haw, Director, atmos

Itinerary
1st July: Devonshire Square, EC2M 4TH 8th July: St Mary Axe, London EC3A 8EP 15th July: New Street Square, London EC4A 3BF 22nd July: Finsbury Avenue Square, London EC2M 2PG Map: http://goo.gl/maps/yuIzc

Resources
Project Website: Client's webpage on the project: Designer's website: http://www.mobileorchard.info/ http://www.colf.org/whats-on/703-mobile-orchard http://www.atmosstudio.com

Please contact Alex Haw, atmos (a@atmosstudio.com, t: +44 (0)7815 040 619) for imagery requests, interviews and media matters

Project Team
Design: atmos Structural Engineering: Blue Engineering Lighting Design: Arup Lighting Sponsor: Architectural FX / LEDLinear / Wibre Plywood Sponsor: DHH Timber Fabrication: Nicholas Alexander + volunteers Logistics: Tellings Transport Real orchard trees donated by: YouGarden and The Worshipful Company of Fruiterers Microsite Web Design: 8fold Client: City of London Festival Festival Tree Sponsor: Bloomberg Funding Partner: Arts Council England Hosts: Broadgate Estates, Devonshire Square Management, Land Securities, 30 St Mary Axe Management Company Ltd Special Thanks: Sinead Mac Manus, Jonathan Perugia, Ed Gillespie, Olivia Sibony - and an incredible team of brilliant volunteers

Notes to Editors
1 atmos is a multidisciplinary practice creating innovative works of art, architecture and design, spanning scales and media. They design buildings and objects, installations and landscapes conjuring meaningful, pleasurable, and enduring experiences. Much of their work involves cuttingedge design and fabrication technologies, complex structures, and digital mapping, exploring the connectivity of people to their precise place in the world. They believe you can have both complex meaning & incontestable beauty. www.atmosstudio,com

2 The City of London Festival brings the City's unique buildings and outdoor spaces to life each summer, with an extensive artistic programme of music, visual arts, film, walks and talks - much of it free. It commissioned the Mobile Orchard for 2013 as part of an ongoing annual campaign to raise awareness of environmental issues through artistic responses to the natural world - focusing this year on urban trees. 64 real trees, donated by the Worshipful Company of Fruiterers, will accompany the construction around the City - 12 of which will be planted at Middlesex Street Estate to form the City of Londons first community orchard; the remainder to be distributed to schools around the capital. The sculpture will be gifted to the Festivals partner charity Trees for Cities as part of their 20th anniversary celebrations, and tour the country. http://www.colf.org/whats-on/703-mobile-orchard

3 Nicholas Alexander was chosen as fabricator for their previous experience of unusual, bespoke constructions, logistics, and in-house digital fabrication expertise. Given the tight budget and large amount of labour required, they organised a huge group of exceptional volunteers - all varying in skill levels, but united by collectivity, enthusiasm and a passion for the project. The fabrication was a large-scale collaborative effort with a high degree of knowledge transfer, and the formation of new social - and working - relationships. http://nicholasalexander.co.uk