el estudio normal reuses 95 car hoods for lollapalooza installation

capot takes center stage at lollapalooza 2023

Argentina-based El Estudio Normal and Martín Huberman have collaborated to create a sculptural epicenter for the awaited Lollapalooza festival’s 2023 edition in Buenos Aires. Titled Capot (Spanish for car hood) the site-specific installation dwells on the relationships humans trace with the objects that surround them, particularly looking at cars, their hoods, and the particular ways in which people interact with them in their daily lives. The installation is shaped from 95 Volkswagen Gol car hoods, configured in a pine cone-like form that towers above festival goers as an artistic backdrop for the event as well as a place for people to gather.

image © Federico Cairoli

a scenic backdrop uniting festival goers

The 95 car hoods sit within the festival epicenter as a beacon for encounters and re-encounters for music lovers, a support stage for resting in between concerts, or just a creative backdrop to capture marvelous moments against. Martín Huberman and El Estudio Normal have devised the installation to embrace notions of low environmental impact by harvesting existing resources, including the car hoods, while minimizing the fabrication of new materials where possible.

Further, the design team has reinterpreted the traditional ‘catch and release’ fishing technique, allowing most of the manufacturing pieces to return to the production line untouched. ‘This way, we grant that the efforts needed to produce the ephemeral have low repercussions on the conditions of the eternal,’ says El Estudio Normal.

Capot takes center stage at Lollapalooza festival 2023 | image © Felipe Gaggero

El Estudio Normal gives new life to everyday objects

Capot is the first episode of Autopartes, the most recent formal research project from El Estudio Normal, inspired by the auto parts industry – a fundamental thrust of Argentina’s national economy. The project seeks to explore new methods of design and uses from everyday objects part of our daily lives, seeking to enhance the classical relationship between design, industry, and the potential user. Materializing this ideology, Capot is built from moments that nurture static objects with experiences and stories that transform them to harness a second life.