Go to Central Park Saturday at 11 am and you’ll catch the front end of two dozen couples getting married at Merchant’s Gate near Columbus Circle. The shotgun weddings are in celebration of New York’s Marriage Equality Act, which squeaked through the state senate last week on a 33-29 vote. Organized by Pop-Up Chapel, the couples will wed inside custom-made chapels created by ICRAVE and Z-A Studios, a pair of New York-based design firms.

Z-A and ICRAVE were two of 56 entrants into a competition run by Pop-Up Chapel, Architizer + the knot. KISS, the Z-A design, looks like a Hershey’s Kiss, with the walls “twisting and torqueing towards each other” like a married couple on consummation night. The constant change in form, Guy Zucker told the Huffington Post, symbolizes the ever-changing identify of the bride + groom/bride + bride/groom + groom as they get older.

Z-A Studios’ KISS is made of honeycombed cardboard. The marriage will last longer than the chapel, for once.

While KISS is a sensual twist, ICRAVE’s chapel is a translucent square girded by steel beams. The wire-mesh roof is hung with strips of light vinyl that will sway in the breeze and throw shadows across the wedding parties and the pavement. On the back wall, behind the officiant, are 12 pairs of ribbons affixed to either side of a steel beam. Following each wedding, couples tie the ribbons into a knot on their way to happily ever after.

This is ICRAVE’s first foray into a design competition and its first pop-up design. Part of the reason is that brand manager Whitney Shanks is Openhouse Gallery’s former managing director. She’s been building, coordinating and hosting temporary installations since 2007 and saw Pop-Up Chapel as a great opportunity for ICRAVE to get experimental.

Greg Spielberg | July 27 2011
greg@openhousegallery.org

Join ICRAVE on Facebook. They’ll be donating $1 to The Human Rights Campaign for each new fan this week.
Find Z-A Studios on Facebook or Twitter + I’ll donate $1 to the charity of your choice.
Follow Pop-Up Chapel on Facebook + Twitter
Join Openhouse Gallery on Facebook + Twitter