Pavilion Project with reused materials from other constructions (12 x 12 x 3.4m)
Basel, Switzerland, 2021
The world reveals itself on the horizon of decomposed objects. When everything has broken down, when we can no longer continue as before, to make an end is to make a beginning. We will design what almost always architects design: a reinforced concrete building.
Therefore, we will use, as almost always, reused wooden elements for its formwork.
But then, as almost never, we will stop right before pouring the concrete.
We believe that an unfinished pavilion that is the actual pavilion, could be a broken circle that shows us what will no longer be. For this building before the building, which is on the fine line between existence and non-existence, showing its absence should be enough.
We will only see its reverse, the shape that shapes the permanent, as a hyper-realistic staging of stopping a constructive event at its maximum saturation point. A Mise en Scène of stopping the inescapable.
When Architecture faces the impossibility of making any real change in the Construction Industry, the only thing left to do is theatre. We won’t seek spatial solutions to solve non-spatial problems. Nor will we prove something that in the Global South we already know: beautiful architecture can be built from reused materials. We want a pavilion as an epiphany, to make us realise that we cannot continue building without consequences.
To open a wound in its crisis, for last year’s words belong to last year’s language. To create narratives beyond the establishment and against it. To make expectations and reality collapse.
Architecture as theatre contains more questions than answers and creates more problems than it solves. When construction is an act of destruction, a truth that feels like a lie could be the only way to be sincere.
By Anadis Gonzalez and Fernando Martirena
