You can clamber down the inside walls of this ramshackle timber basin in the desert by Los Angeles designers Ball-Nogues Studio into a surprise swimming pool.

The pavilion is located in the plains outside the California town of Joshua Tree and was constructed as part of the experimental art project High Desert Test Series.

A ladder allows visitors to climb over the exterior, while rock-climbing treads are affixed to the interior walls.

The plywood used for the walls of the pavilion was salvaged from the formwork of another pavilion, which was is situated in Canada.

We interviewed architect Benjamin Ball of Ball-Nogues Studio about a dragon-like installation made from clothing at the Shenzhen & Hong Kong bi-city Biennale in 2009 - watch the movie here and see the project here.

Photography is by Scott Mayoral.

Here's some more text from Ball-Nogues Studio:

Some thoughts on Yucca Crater –

Located in the barren desert near Joshua Tree National Park, 15 miles from the nearest human settlement, Yucca Crater is a synthetic earthwork that doubled as a recreational amenity during High Desert Test Sites on October 15 & 16, 2011. High Desert Test Sites generates physical and conceptual spaces for art exploring the intersections between contemporary art and life at large. After the event, Yucca Crater was abandoned to the entropic forces of the landscape.

The work resembles a basin that stands 30 feet from rim to low point and is depressed 10 feet into the earth. Rock climbing holds mounted on the interior allow visitors to descend into a deep pool of salt water.

Yucca Crater expands on concepts borrowed from land art, incorporating the prospect of the abandoned suburban swimming pools and ramshackle homestead dwellings scattered across the Mojave. Ball Nogues have re-imagined these interventions in the landscape through a method of production where the tools of fabrication transform to be become objects for display in their own right. The rough plywood structure of Yucca Crater was originally the formwork used to construct another Ball-Nogues work, Talus Dome, in which more than 900 boulder-sized polished metal spheres were assembled to appear as a monumental pile of gravel. The two projects were “cross-designed” such that the method of production used in the first (Talus Dome) has become the central aesthetic for the second (Yucca Crater).

This approach integrates concept, aesthetics, social relationships and production, inviting viewers to reconsider their relationship to art by-products while repositioning them within an alternative economic and geographic domain.

Principals in Charge: Benjamin Ball and Gaston Nogues
Project Manager: Benjamin Jenett
Project Team: Karla Castillo, Deborah Chang, Tyler Crain, Constantina Dendramis, Jessica DeVries, Julieta Gil, James Jones, Isabel Francoy Albert, Luciana Martinez, Nicolas Pappas, Allison Porterfield, Samantha Rose, Ron Shvartsman, Caroline Smith, Alejandra Sotelo, Jess Thomas, Julianne Weiss, Evan Wiskup.
Structural Engineer: Buro Happold, Los Angeles.

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Dezeen Screen: in this next movie filmed by Dezeen at Shenzhen& Hong Kong Bi-city Biennale of Architecture/Urbanism 2009, Benjamin Ball of Ball-Nogues Studio talks about their installation made by suspending 10,000 garments. Watch the movie »

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by Ball-Nogues Studio appeared first on Dezeen.

Los Angeles designers Ball-Nogues Studio have collaborated with UCLA Architecture and Urban Design students to create a courtyard stage set made of coffee tables.

Called Table Cloth, the installation features furniture components joined together to form an platform and backdrop hanging from one wall of the courtyard.

It will be used throughout the summer as a backdrop for performances by the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, with audience members sitting on and gathering around the low tables.

Once deconstructed, the components will be re-assembled as individual pieces of furniture and redistributed.

Here's some more information from Ball-Nogues:

'Table Cloth' at Schoenberg Hall

UCLA Architecture and Urban Design unveils innovative 'Table Cloth' installation

The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music has a new performance space in the courtyard of the Schoenberg Music Building on campus. "Table Cloth," a collaboration between faculty and students, is an innovative and experiential set piece that will serve as a backdrop for the performing arts and everyday social interaction.

The concept for the site emerged from a collaborative process between the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, UCLA Architecture and Urban Design (AUD) and the UCLA Department of Design | Media Arts. AUD lecturer Benjamin Ball and collaborating partner Gaston Nogues, of the Los Angeles–based Ball-Nogues Studio, completed "Table Cloth" after leading AUD graduate students in a class in which they explored different design ideas for the Schoenberg site.

The students discussed how to create an impermanent architectural installation for the performing arts that would be sustainable and allow the building components to be easily adapted for other purposes once the usefulness of the performance space is complete.

"Table Cloth" is comprised of hundreds of individual low, coffee-style tables and three-legged stools. The tables and stools link together collectively to create a "fabric" that hangs from the east wall of the courtyard. When it meets the ground, "Table Cloth" unrolls to form an intimate in-the-round performance area. The audience can sit on the tables and stools within this area.

"Tables are places for social interaction," Ball said. "Dining tables, specifically, facilitate organization and communication within the typical American home. We see this project like the cloth adorning a dining table; however, at Schoenberg, it will adorn the courtyard, an important social hub, and will facilitate community at the scale of the university."

After the structure has served its use as a performance space, the components comprising the installation will be dismantled to become smaller-scaled household commodities, tables and seating. This process, referred to as "cross-manufacturing" by Ball-Nogues, creates small products made from the parts of a larger product. It moves beyond recycling, which down-cycles material into a less valuable state.

The space will host a variety of community-oriented activities, from musical practice to performance, dance to lectures, and social interaction to academic discussions. Because of the work's size and the materials used, its presence will reduce reverberation and alter other acoustical phenomena within the space. "Table Cloth" will embellish the courtyard during the 2010 spring and summer quarters.

Funding for the project was made possible by grants from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and the UCLA Arts Initiative. Structural engineering was provided by Buro Happold, Los Angeles (Matthew Melnyk, lead engineer).

See also:

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Built to Wear by Ball-Nogues Studio	JS Bach Chamber Music Hall by Zaha Hadid	More architecture stories

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Called Built to Wear, the project is part of the Shenzhen & Hong Kong bi-city Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture that opened in China last week, and was assembled by 30 volunteers from Shenzhen.

The installation, made up of garments donated by American Apparel, will be gradually dismantled as the clothes are given to visitors, finally ending on 23 January 2010.

Images are by Benjamin Ball unless otherwise stated.

See our other stories about the Shenzen & Hong Kong Biennale:

Monster's Footprints by MAD
Bug Dome by WEAK!
Bloody Haze by MAP Office
Shenzhen & Hong Kong Biennale photos
The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Mésarchitectures

Here's some more information from Ball-Nogues Studio:

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Temporary spatial installations within urban cultures are a rapidly evolving phenomenon.  Unlike “permanent” buildings, these structures nimbly respond to the accelerated temporality of cities on the move like Shenzhen and Hong Kong. Increasingly they provide the urban spectacles that “signature” buildings aim to deliver.

Like never before, cities are adorned with provisional environments and architecturally scaled events. This situation has been further emboldened by the financial meltdown in 2008 as investors look to spend money on big urban spectacles without the financial commitment of making buildings.

Within this economic outlook, the disposable plates of architecture are better investments than a collection of fine tableware. However, an important question looms when cleaning up after the meal: can the plate be composted or should it be colored with crayon and reused as a party decoration?

Built to Wear, constructed for the 2009 Shenzhen Hong Kong Biennale of Urbanism will be on view through January 23 2010 in the underground exhibition space at the Shenzhen Civic Square.

Above image by Brianna Gorton.

Invoking the theme of the exhibition - City Mobilization – the construction of the installation activated collaboration between Ball Nogues Studio, American Apparel, the Biennale organizers and a group of 30 volunteers from Shenzhen. This hanging architecturally scaled structure is comprised of 10,000 items of clothing manufactured by American Apparel – operator of the largest garment factory in the United States.

Each garment serves the dual role of building component and individual article of clothing. Over the course of the Biennale, the installation will be dismantled and the T-shirts, muscles shirts, spaghetti tank tops, baby dresses, bikinis and g-strings comprising it will be dispersed to visitors.

At a time when most US garment production has moved offshore, Built to Wear invites viewers to contemplate the relocation of manufacturing from the developed world to emerging economic powers like China while reconsidering notions of material life-cycle in architecturally scaled structures.

By using a coveted consumer good – the garment - as its basic building block the project expands and critiques notions of “green’ architecture while activating public space through consumption.

As a visual concept, the installation will serve as a symbolic gesture of sustainability and a poetic reminder that the buildings in our cities are impermanent: frozen moments in the flow of products through the tributaries of global exchange. Outside of its environmental commentary, the project dramatically re-contextualizes the clothing item – a symbol of mass consumerism - into an alternative gesture of hope.

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by Ball-Nogues Studio appeared first on Dezeen.