Umbrellas

After the storm last Friday, I started thinking about the umbrella as architecture. A functional place for shelter from the elements...an immediate, transportable roof to create a implicit space with the slide of a mechanism.
It relates directly to my project as it goes along with the word "sliding" and is architecture that transforms soley based on human touch and movement.
I observed a lot of umbrellas that day...big golf umbrellas, clear mushroom-shaped umbrellas, and lots of little purse-sized umbrellas that didn't seem to be providing that much shelter for it's occupant at all...
They danced along the sidewalk, bobbing with the footsteps of its owner, obscuring their lowered faces but revealing some information as to the height and pace of the owner. Most times the implicit space beneath the umbrella was not respected, as people continued to push each other as they stepped into the subway and tried to navigate croweded sidewalks. But as the sole pedestrian on my street, the nylon above and the rain falling from the edges created a little dry space inside/beneath for me to hide...