In Open Burble, members of the public come together to compose, assemble and control an immense rippling, glowing, bustling “Burble” that sways in the evening sky in response to the crowd interacting below. This massive structure, the form of which the public has designed themselves, exists on such a large scale that it is able to compete visually in an urban context with the skyscrapers that surround it.

The Burble, soaring upwards like a plume of smoke, is constructed from a set of 140 modular and configurable carbon-fiber units approximately two meters in diameter. Each unit is supported by seven extra-large helium balloons (for a total of about 1000 individual pixels), which contain sensors, LEDs and micro-controllers, enabling balloons and units to co-ordinate and create patterns of color that ripple up toward the sky.

Part installation, part performance (for the design and assembly by the public is as much a part of the project as the actual flying is), the Burble enables people to contribute on an urban scale to a structure that occupies their city, albeit for only one night.

Just as the participants are the composers of the Burble’s tall form, so too are they the ones to control it. They hold on to it using handles, with which they may position the Burble as they like. In fact, it is only the weight of the crowd that keeps the Burble from escaping into the atmosphere: a pact of trust in an architecture of lightness.

Open Burble first appeared at the opening of the Singapore Biennale 2006.

Usman Haque (designer and architect); Rolf Pixley (algorithmist and chromodynamicist); Kei Hasegawa (detail designer); Fred Guttfield (detail designer); Seth Garlock (B2B network, balloon hardware design); Susan Haque (logistics); Ai Hasegawa (field overseer)