TreeHouse Camera Obscura
Nilu Izadi and The Facility Architects
29 Sept - 26 Nov 2006

Artist Nilu Izadi and The Facility Architects have been working with Michael Faraday Primary School, located in London Borough of Southwark, since 2004. The school's Head Teacher, Karen Fowler, wanted to improve their playground. A series of multi-disciplinary workshop sessions took place which aimed at helping the children re-discover their own understanding of play, space and design. As a result of these sessions, the children dreamt up a series of art-inspired play pavilions that are unique to their school.

The first of these pavilions is the TreeHouse Camera Obscura. This has been created by recycling a disused metal storage tank. Using a series of lenses, embedded within the walls of the vessel, the TreeHouse Camera Obscura projects a bright sharp inverted panoramic image of the external school playground onto the inside walls of the drum-shaped tank. The tank holds up to 10 children and 2 staff at one time. The TreeHouse Camera Obscura is both a unique art object and a place to play with and explore. It also unfolds as a performance space. School staff will also use the camera obscura as a platform to teach the scientific principles of light, photography and image making.

The term camera obscura literally means 'dark room' taken from the Latin camera, meaning room or chamber, and obscura, meaning dark. A small hole made in one wall of a darkened room will, given the right lighting conditions, produce an inverted image of the exterior view of that wall on the internal wall opposite it.

The Camera Obscura Treehouse is the first in a series of podia designed with the pupils of MFPS. 5 no. lenses create a 360 degree inverted image of the school and its surroundings, projected across the curved interior of a converted and refurbished grain silo. Submarine doors and windows allow for the steel drum to open up to become a performance space for puppet shows and readings.