Let's Pallet

We have all been there at the front, surrounded by other curious ears, beer in hand, plastic cup, warm content and a friend of a friends band taking the stage. The genre may differ and so too may the colour of the overly enthusiastic girls hair but one thing always remains the same, and that is the vacant semi-circle in front of the performing act. Those invisible protecting arms.

I was part of a punk-rock band back in my years at college and before that I had been attempting to make music with close friends. Gigs we went to on a grander scale at the Astoria or Brixton Academy had no problem with filling every space the crowd could fit into, and that sweaty close quarters feeling was something to be weirdly cherished. However, the smaller scale local gigs always carried with them that recognisable void at the front of the crowd, that reassuring cautious barrier between the unknown source of noise and oneself.

Architecturally, this void is a fascinating space, and a rare example of a visually and physically empty space that is somehow full of anticipation. I imagine a preacher standing on a podium in a public square back in the sixteenth century would have created a similar feeling as a brave speech about opinions of the state and crown was delivered, a crowd gathering before him cautious of his speculations.

In the context of my life I somewhat recently found myself in just this kind of situation, well in what would have been the aforementioned kind of situation if it were not for a group of rogue timber pallets. It was the launch of a Kickstarter campaign for Turf Projects, an arts collective in South London, and I found myself in the large black painted stage space at the rear of Matthews Yard in Croydon. Now what would normally have been the void space in this scenario, comfortably situated somewhere between the growing crowd and the projection wall was a layered plinth constructed of timber pallets.

The pallets, covered in artificial turf created a very inviting seating platform and without encouragement sections of the crowd introduced themselves to this setup and in some instances merged half standing and half seated to create a transition between two spaces. So from the simple idea of a glorified projector table came the birth of a social bridge. By quite honestly placing a disordered and playful object in between a regimented crowd and a wall, the function of a fountain in a town square found almost anywhere in Europe had been created in the back room of a cafe in Croydon.

A mixture of spacial awareness and order seems to be the catalyst that create these small instances of 'non-physical architecture' such as the gig scenario or any queue you may find yourself in, but what is quite clearly as interesting is the next dimension of rebel architecture to this invisible governor such as that of the pallets.

tW