Selfishnest — Sean Lyon

Selfishnest
55°14'25.8"N 10°32'12.5"E
Ryslinge, Fyn, Denmark

Team:

Álvaro del Río
Mikkel Elsbøl Nikolajsen
Sean Lyon

The Selfishnest is an architectural intervention exploring the virtual and digital lives we project out onto the world. We mould and craft an online presence to exhibit the best of ourselves and to curate a life devoid of negative human experience. The meteoric rise of social media sites and instant communication platforms has propelled the human need to feel comfortable in a public world where every move, post and comment is scrutinised and prowled upon. This extroverted digital nest temporarily satisfies our cravings for the attention and validation from our peers by broadcasting this often filtered and manipulated perspective of a skewed reality onto our digital wall of images. No other physical human act best exemplifies this contemporary phenomenon more so than the act of taking a selfie.

Investigating this act through mappings of bodily movement reveals how one optimises the camera position to balance flattering lighting conditions upon the face with an attractive and captivating background. Tracing these movements through space and time served as a departure point for generating a form on the given site — one that informs the body and its motion across the site to entice and encourage the operation of taking a selfie. The use of translucent foil filters and reflects the harsh incoming light, playfully illuminating the nest with a warm light that changes with time and reacts with the occupants bodily movement.

The construction is an aggregation of nodes, connectors and surfaces. 48 unique triangular faces were subdivided in order to efficiently nest them onto the CNC milled plywood sheets, significantly reducing material waste. The triangular foil sheets are pinned in three places and pulled taught. 58 different connector types hold not only these subdivisions and maintain structural continuity — they also act to hold the foil edges in place as not to have them hanging or drooping.