Southbank Centre

Outset was delighted to support Thomas Saraceno’s 'Air Port City' as part of the exhibition "Psycho Buildings" at the Hayward Gallery in 2008.

Argentine artist Saraceno creates experimental sculptures that alter our experience of the built environment. Including balloons and inflatable constructions, his sculptures often resemble networks of floating cells or suspended habitats, including airborne gardens, floating bridges and large-scale models for futuristic dwellings. Combining visual elegance with rigorous engineering, Saraceno’s ethereal sculptures re-explore the history of utopian modernism while questioning our relationship to nature and natural phenomena.

Of his ambitious project for "Psycho Buildings" the artist said:

'Air-Port-City' is like a flying airport. Up in the sky there will be this cloud, a habitable platform that floats in the air changing form and merging with other platforms just as clouds do. It will fly through the atmosphere pushed by winds, both local and global in an attempt to equalise the (social) temperature and differences in pressure. It will be a sustainable and mobile migration. These aerial cities will be in a permanent state of transformation similar to nomadic cities.”