Billboard Turned Into An Artist Residency
Over the past years, infinite numbers of artists have tweaked billboards to discuss the appropriateness of advertising in public space. At the same time brands have done much to spice up billboards in order to make their message extra attractive. Mexican paper company Scribe created a combination of both — it recently launched Scribe Billboard, a temporary residency for artists inside a billboard.
Architect Julio Gomez Trevilla has designed the temporary house, that is hidden behind a billboard in Mexico City. The tiny artist residency accommodates a kitchen, bathroom and desk space and can only be accessed via a hidden door in the billboard itself. First one to occupy the Scribe Billboard was artist Cecilia Beaven. During her ten-days stay she painted a mural that represents the numerous things you can do with a blank piece of paper. Her work is based on 50 requests that were sent in by followers of Scribe on Twitter.
Somehow the project reminds us of other billboard tweaks that we featured on Pop-Up City. One of them is the Billboard House in Bangkok. The other is the genius secret two-star parasite hotel room designed by French artist Etienne Boulanger in Berlin in 2007. Boulanger invited guests to his hotel, that was hidden behind the facade of a random billboard. Billboards in general seem to be great urban elements two tweak, both for commercial and critical reasons.
Etienne Boulanger’s single-room billboard hotel
What about the proposal by the LA-based based artist Stephen Glassman to transform a billboard into a floating park above the highway? Or the guerrilla style merry-go-round made of a rotating billboard? Last month we featured billboards in Thailand made to double as furnished walls for houses.
