Croatian collective Numen / For Use have produced a wonderful piece of ‘architecture’, creating 2 stories of flexible nets that act as one giant, multi-level hammock.

I love this idea – In fact, I had a very similar idea a few years back – What I intrigued me about the concept was that while a hammock is just a seat, people often race to jump into one given the choice over it or a chair. I wondered whether it was because of peoples association with them and the palm lined beaches of the tropics – an association with holiday. Also, you often find more than one person trying to get in them at once – It can create a breakdown of those personal space barriers. So I saw the idea of a massive, public, multi-level hammock as having the potential to get the general public interacting with each other in a more playful way.

Seems that these guys have a similar thinking…
“Many of my friends would love to have it in their backyard, to open the window and jump inside for a sunbath or whatever,” For Use/Numen’s Christoph Katzler explained “But I guess it would be difficult to find a location where all neighbors would give their permission to have ‘strangers’ hanging around in front of their windows.” One possibility, he says, would be to insert it into a football cage. The main requirement is that people are free to interact with the installation. “Nowadays we write it in our contracts that the public has to be able to go inside during normal opening hours,” Katzler says. Once inside and crawling around on all fours, visitors tend to let down their guard and start chatting with each other. “That’s why we like to see it in the public,” the artist says. “Maybe it is somehow like in a different world and some rules do not count anymore for a while.”

I’m just glad someone had actually went out there and produced it.
(As well as a black version, I had wanted to do a bright red version too!)

It is currently on show at Z33 gallery in Berlin

Link here.