Summer boom

Summer Boom (Boom del verano) is a playful and technologial installation designed by Spanish studio Vilaplana & Vilaplana in Alicante, which combines the popular tradition of the bonfire as an ephemeral urban monument to new technologies, providing wider experience of the city through augmented reality.

  In a city like Alicante, mostly dedicated to tourism and entertainment, leisure facilities and structures succeeded without being valued as local heritage. The installation is paired by a mobile app that rebuilds fragments of movies, baths, and ballrooms built between 1917 and 2017, so to come back to life a second time. The project doesn’t want to be a nostalgic quest, but rather a contemporary interactive attraction.

The bonfire serves as a reference point for the virtual reality side of the project. Once visitors discover the achievements of the past summer, they can be photographed within very different scenarios (spas, water parks, old cinemas, dance halls, etc.) taking with them a virtual memory of places that are no longer exist. The application allows the user to virtually build his or her own bonfire and photograph it with a smartphone. The popular tradition and memory of the missing heritage become now usable through social networks.

Summer Boom (Boom del verano), Alicante, Spain
Program: installation
Architects: Vilaplana&Vilaplana Estudio, PlugandYeah
Team: Amelia Vilaplana, Paula Vilaplana, Juan López
Contractors: Taller Paco Granja Paco Granja, Ricardo Granja, Javier Granja
Completion: 2017