Travelogue of An Armchair Traveller: City Lounge, St. Gallens

The city of St. Gallens have a unique working right in the midst of the city centre. On suggestions of and with the assistance from a Swiss bank - Schweizer Verbandes der Raiffeisenbaken (SVRB), the town centre has been converted to World's largest open air lounge.

The bank was not happy with the deserted after office hours looks of the streets and plaza in the city centre and set a challenge to Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist and architect Carlos Martinez to inject a colourful life into the streets. They came up with a brilliant idea of converting the whole area into carpeted family lounge, thus bringing into being a enormous piece of working art.

Red wall to wall carpets (astro-turf) have been laid out between the buildings and cover everything in the area creating a massive red landscape. A make believe Porsche in a parking bay has also been carpeted. Whole area consists of three sections;

Cafe with several spongy chairs and tables ideal for a picnics;
Rest/Relaxing lounge – an area of rounded lounges and sofas and
Business lounge - a "room" of long benches with full-length tables that can easily host an outdoor meeting for 20.

Overhead giant lamps which look like moon have been provided which during the night glow with orange, red, blue and violet colours.

The whole area is now abuzz with activity almost all the waking hours. During the day the office workers spend their lunch/coffee breaks in a relaxed atmosphere and during the evening and night several families spend their free time picnicking.