(3/3)
Our story focuses its scope on a group of friends who opportunistically squat the decommissioned gas station and appropriate it into a “weird” ad-hoc workshop suited to their energies and whims. They then stumble upon a Very Trendy Material, and start to build hype around their Accidentally Popular Accidental Practice…until the product they’ve streamlined their work around falls out of favor and is no longer “cool”.
The gas station itself becomes the tangible manifestation of their fortunes, both rising and falling, in a highly situated microcosm of market forces and disparate possibilities. And once their time with it is over, it continues to exist, but in a form different from how it existed before. Potential futures swirl around and rearrange themselves constantly, as the terms of design’s engagement shift with incentive structures as though they themself are only trends. Institutional and infrastructural capture and appropriation confuses the designer and the designed.