Floating Cinemas and the Olympics

After meeting them at this year's Emerging Architect awards, Back to Tap are thrilled to read in BD today that the Olympic Delivery Authority has commissioned Studio Weave to design a floating cinema which will cruise the canals of the five Olympic host boroughs next summer.

Studio Weave's "Longest Bench" and their artistic partners for the Olympic Cinema project, artists Nina Pope and Karen Guthrie.

Back to Tap's favourite Hackney practice will partner with artists Nina Pope and Karen Guthrie, known as Somewhere, for the ODA and its Create 11 summer festival.

The Floating Cinema commission is part of Up Projects’ Portavilion series which also saw temporary arts pavilions erected in London’s parks and public spaces over the summer.

The latest Portavilion project will focus on the waterways connecting the boroughs of Tower Hamlets, Newham, Waltham Forest, Hackney and Greenwich with the new Olympic Park.

Waterways and land are both up for private administration following the Olympics. Will the floating cinema be free to sail?

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmcumeds/416/416we31.htm

We hope that somewhere in the project they will raise the issue of ownership over resources - as the Olympic lands appear to be headed the way of Canary Wharf and will likely be one hundred percent private owned after the Games (see image), one wonders about the mobile cinema's freedom of movement. Will they be free to move along the waterways?