The Floating Embassy

The Floating Embassy is an ongoing, collaborative project by the New Landscapes Institute (NLI). It was inspired by Ant Farm’s Dolphin Embassy (1973–1978), the utopian art and architecture collective’s un-built proposal for an ‘interspecies communication station’ on Australian waters in the 1970s. NLI’s project consists of a mobile pontoon, an archival display inside Pier 2/3, and a series of programs investigating how experimental spatial practices can respond to our changing oceans and waterways.

'Designed and built as a collaboration, the mobile pontoon is site specific and facilitates creative research in response to its locations on and around water. It explores what a contemporary Floating Embassy might be today, re-situating the experiment within our current urban condition. Bringing together artists, architects, designers, marine researchers, and the public, it will host a series of discussions on water, allowing small groups to float temporarily in non-human aquatic space. The furniture on board responds to and exaggerates the sandstone topography of the Sydney harbour shoreline and can be adapted for either ‘Exhibition, Roundtable or Contemplation / Isolation modes.''—New Landscapes Institute