About the Exhibit:
Of the 17 projects designed for Echo, by SAIC's Capstone students in the Architecture, Interior Architecture and Designed Objects, Simiran Singh's Flâneur was selected by the jury of Alliance Francąise to be implemented. Flâneur proposes an experience of space inserted into the Alliance Francąise de Chicago, where doors camouflaged into the walls open to a whole new world.

Flâneur uses a panoramic wallpaper, spread out through all four coat closets along Alliance Francąise's formal salon, to create a secret inhabitable space, as in the hidden passages of Hôtel Particuliers (French Townhouses), where servants and masters used different circulation paths to move from room to room.

The wallpapered landscape is truly inspired by le Douanier Rosseau and represents a modern allegory of a utopian planetary garden, enclosed and surprising, a real 'trompe-l'oueil. It addresses in witty and naive terms, comparable to Rousseau's; the paradise of tomorrow. Flâneur brings the in the outside world, the fantastic and the real, including a series of yaretas, known as the oldest living creature on earth. It invites visitors to linger, to open more doors and to be transported through the building walls into an alternative reality where one is reminded of the gradual destruction of earth and its ecosystems.