ili.ad presented Times Pool Lounge in Inside~Out, the second annual exhibition of outdoor design curated and produced by Kin & Company. Originally conceived as an interactive outdoor exhibition, the 2020 edition was reimagined as a virtual presentation in response to the pandemic, bringing together more than 40 works by independent designers within otherworldly digital landscapes created by Duyi Han.
The exhibition placed outdoor furniture and functional objects into small groups across nine virtual scenes, transforming a show about physical gathering into a meditation on distance, connection, and the imagined public realm. Architectural Digest included Inside~Out among its “7 Design Exhibitions to Know About—Even If You Can’t See Them,” noting that the second edition had been planned for the William Vale before Kin & Company self-produced it as a virtual show.
Times Pool Lounge was developed from a design originally commissioned for The New York Times: an office lounge intended for a conference room within the Renzo Piano-designed New York Times Building. The work translates that corporate architectural setting into an outdoor chaise form, carrying forward ili.ad's interest in facade, leisure, ornament, and the strange afterlives of architectural commissions.
Designed during a period of travel between New York and Mexico City, the piece folds together several of the studio’s early concerns: the tubular logic of the Times Building facade, the visual density of Mexico City’s Deco and folk-modernist architecture, and the slippage between serious architectural reference and more exuberant, almost cinematic design languages. Within Inside~Out’s virtual landscapes, Times Pool Lounge appeared as both furniture and apparition: a lounge chair for a social world temporarily displaced into images.
Object / Exhibition Details
Times Pool Lounge
2020
Bent wood, fabric
100 × 45 × 40 in
Presented in Inside~Out
Curated and produced by Kin & Company
Virtual landscapes by Duyi Han