CHULU PAVILION | ARCHQUID ​architecture think-act tank

In this small project we address the problem of the expressions coming from the exhibition of the material to the non-evident and that, in this case, link the architecture with natural elements. This probably reveals a conceptual richness that arises from an organic origin. We believe that these types of exercises can help to build and reveal a particular ethos, rooted in visual stimuli and evocations of the landscape.

This pavilion proposes a meeting place and exhibition of small artistic objects. That is the most obvious aspect in the programmatic configuration of this project. It can also be a place to rest and to protect from the sun. However, it is clear that we expect more.

We want to think about the idea of ​​an object that bursts into a particular landscape and that in doing so raises a range of issues that go far beyond these basic and necessary programmatic conditions.

The variations of light, and the atmospheres that arise from them, make people approach the pavilion or its surroundings and, in many occasions, spend time in or near it. We believe that this type of project is completed with the interaction and participation of users. It is in this way that it is articulated, through the movement of people and how they acquire a role in the completeness of design. Also part of the project is a careful and precise analysis of these uses, of these movement flows and ultimately of the empirical aspect in general. This is so because it is considered a second stage of construction that establishes a growth following the parameters arising from those analyzes.

In this pavilion, we explore certain characteristics of wood that, although covered with a reddish lacquer, continues to expose several intrinsic issues of the material, leaving visible aspects such as texture and its link with an organic origin. The idea of ​​time, as in all projects that use wood, can be analyzed and left in evidence with greater or lesser intensity, depending on the program.

The wood, and even more so when it is raw, refers with great clarity to its origin. The semantics of this material gives this project nuances that exceed the most obvious characteristics that we can find in it. As we already did in some of our previous projects - and we believe that this idea is far from being exhausted - we are interested in the connection of the material with a previous situation, with a memory and an origin. In this case the material genesis is in the tree, and it is in it that we find a history macerated with water and wind, with stillness and vibrations. With time.

Pavilions often open up opportunities to experiment with materials and construction techniques that have yet to gain public approval.

But they also allow new spatial experiences, new ways of illuminating, of disposing known materials and new ways of relating to the context.

In fact, many times they can be considered as generators and context modifiers. This is what we try in this case that, by a contrast of geometric and chromatic nature, the pavilion stands as a precise, clearly identifiable object that "emanates" identity. We call it in this case "contextual identity" because empirically we see that in daily use, it generates particular conditions that put into question some specific aspects: movements around it, fragmentation of the landscape (variable aspect depending on the relative position of the observer) and rethinking the material qualities of the surrounding space. It even invites us to think about the possible nuances of interiority / exteriority that may arise from this element. This is because it is not simply the delimitation of an intermediate space, such as a gallery that regulates the internal / external relationship, but it is an object that by its morphology and disposition, allows us to think in nuances in that sense. The sinuosity of the layers and the variable separation between them collaborate to blur the limit of those opposites.

We believe that there is a dialectical richness that arises from the critical interpretations that are usually made of the idea of ​​the pavilion that, with its apparent volatility, puts in question the will to permanence of architecture. This invites us to think about the idea of ​​duration in a way that can hardly be achieved by other constructions. The distance between the idea and the representation is usually smaller, just as it is between the abstract space prior to the concretion of the project, and the subsequent empirical space.

There are projects that incorporate the idea of ​​"possibility" more clearly than others. This is because some of them pretend to be a finished manifesto, a closed and finite idea that is developed in all its capacity. If this is the case in some examples and not in others, it is an issue that exceeds this brief description and interpretation, but without doubt there are - in a deliberate way or not - the two positions in all the projects. We believe that our works have to remain open, in a state of suspension that invites us to think about the idea of ​​something that expands and concepts that are projected-ideally-ad infinitum. This ungraspable character, we believe, allows not only to leave open all the intrinsic possibilities of design, but also to open other subsequent projects, concatenated to it.