Designed and built by a very talented student team at Arizona State University, the Peritoneum shade structure reflects their collaboration and interdisciplinary skills as they employed their respective talents for this temporary shade structure. Originally built on a plaza space on the university campus, the project was recently moved to be displayed in a major art district in downtown Phoenix along Roosevelt Row. The design, which won the ASLA Student Award of Excellence 2012, is an undulating blue structure that evokes a calming, cooling environment, and captivates others by its daring interpretation of typical shade structures. More images and the students’ description after the break.
Peritoneum, associated with the ribcage, transforms an underutilized area into an active passageway, place of rest, and ultimately the core adjacent design and art school. The plaza onto which the structure is placed is located between an active lecture hall, the art school, and the design school. The project “square” is a space of 35 feet by 45 feet. In the past, the plaza itself has been underutilized, and observation has shown that most visitors of the site use it merely as a pathway to and from different buildings.
