sommer pavilion

concurso . cascais . em parceria com ponto atelier

competition . cascais . with ponto atelier

. Place 

Parada Garden, Cascais

Of a classic character, the Parada Garden in Cascais, characterizes by a consistent design of the continuous emergence of the city. By not having a recognizable geometry around, it relates to the context through a center (the statue of Costa Pinto) from where the different ludic paths are born. 
This paths germinate from its concentric force and are filled with different elements (trees, benches, drinking fountains, statues, urban art), which dialogue with each other in a fragmented way. This apparent chaos creates a constant permeability between the interior of the garden and the context that surrounds it, providing an ambulatory experience, but that appears fragile in the search on establish a prolonged stay. This ambivalence starts from the absence of a common denominator, or moments of interiority and greater arboreal agglomeration that provide a more intimate atmosphere. Thus, the Parada Garden dialogues with the context as an observed and passent place, in which the different fragments denote an absence of unity.

 . Concept

Border

 It is proposed to look at the garden from within and work with its identity elements. The pavilion arises spontaneously, as it puts the evidence on the point, where all the parts emerge. Here the extension of the visual field results from the metaphysical character that space and object acquire. A line is drawn around the seemingly chaotic elements, expressing an inside and an outside. Thus, an inaccessible border is created by protecting two of its water points: the drinking fountain and other two symmetrical fountains. This ancestral knowledge is guarded, sacralizing it.It is proposed a border that creates an enclosed body, which separates the secular world from the sacred. A relationship that is evidenced from the moment that there is an inside (sacred), and an outside (mundane). As a consequence the line draws a neutral place that precedes the arrival at the focal point of the whole intervention, allowing the emphasis of the experience. The sacralization of a recognized object marks a new encounter, acquiring this object a new metaphysical dimension. The place emerges from the point, anatomical strength of the garden, in which the walls that surround it create a new context of timelessness. Water, symbolic element par excellence of this sacred sense, is assumed as an identity and aggregator. The way we relate to it must be worked out in a sensible way, appealing to our most intimate and transcendent sensations. A sensory experience that should not be evident, looking for the intimate character absent in the garden.

. Curatorship

The performativity of the body as curatorship

Beginning with the primordial element of spatial construction, the proposed pavilion is the object that fixes the elements of the garden in time and contextualizes them on a new metaphysics. This sacral condition, with which these elements are confronted, raises questions that go far beyond building a new boundary around them. The built/receptacle relationship is placed on a new understanding of signs and codes that only exist with the performativity of the body, understood as its recipient.
The absence of an ongoing curatorial program, that occurs during the presence of the pavilion in the garden, is not part of a lack of definition, because it resides in the pavilion that performative identity condition. The curatorial focus should highlight the elements of water: the visual and tactile relations that have with them. Adding other artistic visions to the proposed pavilion would not only adulterate the entire identity of the project, but would also remove the focus from the water elements that are intended to be evidenced.
The spatial force, the confrontation between the body and the pavilion as a total curatorial experience can be understood as the action taken by the sculptures of the artist Richard Serra. Visitors as they traversed the spiers of Guggenheim Bilbao were caught up by them. Some reach out to touch the walls, the patina of red-brown rust inviting the contact, others sat inside the sculptures and simply admire.
It is this experience that is brought to the pavilion, the visitor is an active participant in the process. The pavilion develops internal circuits that create diverse situations with meaning, always connected with these elements of water present in the garden. In order to emphasize this relationship, it is proposed two moments that are articulated with the community, namely: the construction of the pavilion, in which the techniques used will be demonstrated, and then its destruction, which acquires the meaning of killing the artistic object and present it as a symbol of the contemporary fluidity, from which we are subject.


. Construction

The material crudeness of the pavilion must appeal to the same tactile senses and spatial discovery that the works of Richard Serra tell us about. If in the case of the American sculptor is the iron, that forming curves will create this contact, in this case, a thermal brick scratched in sight is used on its construction, which should work with sensory mechanisms of visitors. A material that causes the pavilion to appear a priori with the condition of apparent ruin. This incorporates in itself a presumed paradox, but if we understand it with a device belonging to the Baumanian liquid identity, we perceive that we are dealing with the "desubjectification" of it.
This requires an inquiry into the mechanisms that are used to evidence the sculptural identity. These same questions are raised by Delfim Sardo in his book "The Experimental Exercise of Freedom", where the artist Gordon Matta-Clark emphasizes, through the performative theatricality of his work. The sculptural dimension of his works were centered on architecture, and despite the political and social dimension, such as the "Conical Intersect" in Paris, the operation understands both execution and final work as phases of the art work.
By placing the raw material inside and outside, the pavilion and its visitors are expected to be confronted with the imagery of memory. Ruin, as a conceptual idea, may be the expression of a lyric that has been lost, thus seeking a timeless sense with the elements that are in our formal intimacy. It is proposed that  constructing the pavilion as an integral part of the curatorial program, on which acknowledges the constructive methods applied can be learned, as well as allowing those participating in this activity to broaden their visual universe.

. Destruction

The condition of being built a ruin and the conceptual strength of a temporary element must be evidenced. Like urban art, the proposed pavilion has more strength when it is destroyed, making this an indispensable part of its identity, so that its memory, as an ephemeral object, is expanded as a total work. By acquiring it as a built ruin that sacralizes elements present in the garden, we could wonder about the very sacredness of the pavilion.
If we look at the work "Days End" at Pier 52 in New York at Matta-Clark, we notice that the opening of the semi-circle shaped on the façade of the abandoned pavilion in the port of this North American city illuminates the entire central nave, confers a sacral sense to seeking a spatial idea of a cathedral. The relationship between sacralized space and the sacrificial object is the constant condition present between the proposed pavilion and the elements of the garden to be sacred. This announces a seemingly rhetorical question: If the elements become sacred, since they contain in themselves the whole conceptual focus of the pavilion, the water, what happens to the pavilion itself? Is it a sacred space itself?

The poetics of Matta-Clark's ruins transposes a concept he created, the ‘non-u-ment’. In the work "Days End", already cited,it goes on the idea of a forgotten relic. For Matta-Clark, if a traditional monument is made to stay out of time, and remain for eternity, a 'non-u-ment' points out to the impossibility of such aim, just as the ruins, participating in the flow of time. Calling the ancient European ruins of benign because they were "clean", Matta-Clark continues to propose that ‘non-u-ment’ is the most provocative relic.
It is this conceptual force that manages to secure the relation of built ruin, which does not exist as a formalist drift, but which is drawn with and to the place, and deviates it from any sacred sense. The visitors create their own rites, in a liturgy that is only guided by the limits established by the pavilion itself and by the elements present in the garden. The architectural language of the ruin to be built is also a paradigmatic theme, because it goes on what Matta-Clark suggests as "provocative relic."

Perceive the ways in which visitors relate to the pavilion, if they acquire it as a "forgotten relic", or if it shows the existing elements sacralizing them through the proposed relations with them, and if the architectural language adopted influences  these relations is the performative process that is intended to reveal.