The Story

Palapa [pa:lapa] (meaning process in Palapa) is an informally evolved, collective city of the future, whose form and character were directly influenced by the group dynamics of the people that established it. 

The Lighting

The light concept is based on layers. In early stages we collaborated with Kulturkosmos, Lautwerfer, Thomas Kosslick from QuiteBright and Stefan Kolbe from Subport in designing a stage lighting concept that would not only work with the city concept, but also fulfill the needs of bands performing on stage and please the eyes of the crowd in- and outside of the tent.

Read More

The Build

The extensive build inside and around the 1200 m2 tent was realized within 4 weeks on site with a Wanderzirkus team of up to 100 people during the peak building phase, which we divided into 4 subteams (organisation, construction, paint and lights). It is safe to say that the project was only made possible through the trust and support of Kulturkosmos and Fusion Festival with their extensive network, highly capable crew and professional infrastructure on site.

The Inspiration

The architecture and decoration concept is heavily inspired by ideas of contemporary science fiction including ‘Blade Runner’ and ‘The World Inside’ amongst others, as well as the aesthetics and architecture of actual metropolitan areas with a high population density which have grown organically over time including the walled city Kowloon, Seoul, Tokyo, Medinas in Morocco and favelas in Rio amongst others.

Like this Palapa became a view into a future version of our mega cities and a showcase of a subcultural meta-phenomenon: the change from city-planned housing to hostile environments on the verge of decay to unpredictably growing melting pots of underground culture. This development led to a variety of movements in modern history; like the birth of graffiti and hip-hop subculture in New York in the 1970s, the explosion of rave culture in Berlin and Detroit in the 1990s and the auto tuning scene in current Tokyo. Not forgetting the creative communal art spaces found in abandoned factories all over the world.

The Language

Palapa uses it’s very own coded language, to create a bridge between the different cultures living within the city.

The countless details

Each building within the set has a specific function, tells a story and was designed by a different individual. For the decoration of the facades we sourced trucks full of recycled materials from reconstructions and renovations of residential, commercial and industrial housing.