Clio Capeille imagines architecture that can only be used at night

The project is on show at the Galata Greek Primary School for the Istanbul Design Biennial 2014, which continues until 14 December. «These tendencies are shaping a future 24-hour non-stop city, drawing no difference between night and day,» she said. It   is presented in a dark room, so visitors need to use torches to find their way around. Capeille has also designed a kit of tools to help people experience the darkness, including a glove for unscrewing light bulbs, a set of headphones that isolate night sounds, a pair light-extracting goggles and a notebook with black carbon pages for «blind sketching». The first is a «pre-reverie observatory» that visitors could climb up to survey the nighttime landscape. Istanbul Design Biennial 2014: nighttime has become «an endangered species» says architecture graduate Clio Capeille, who has designed architectural structures especially for use after dark (+ slideshow). These   structures would be accompanied   by night-blooming flowers such as Ipomoea alba (moonflower) and Datura inoxia (thorn-apple), which would define the borders of the nighttime territory. There’s also a horizontal chamber to facilitate the transition from light to dark, a «nycto-therapy» centre to treat the human biological tolerance of real darkness, and a cinema where natural blackness is used to trigger viewers’ imaginations.