Nuage is an organic pergola designed by the Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec that brings shade, shelter, seating and charm to the Paseo Ponti in the Miami Design District. Like ivy that grows along the street, Nuage engages with buildings and facades, creating a natural relationship with the surrounding architecture.
The sun shines through the steel and colored glass structure that mimics cloud apertures, casting graphic shadows that vibrate with blues and greens like stained-glass windows crossed by the sun in cathedrals. Local rustic plants envelop the project, with trees jutting through the clouds to the sky, or relaxing against them.
"Miami is a city where tropical nature sits, so that plants and trees have a very expressive manner. Also natural forces such has sun, wind and rain, are very strong. Nuage-Promenade wish to play with all those factors. Somehow there is an organic thinking behind it, the shapes do not belong to the straight line nor the perpendicular grid, they are about instinctive yet repetitive construction. A little the way ivy is growing onto building but in an extraordinary scale. Of course Nuage-Promenade is also conceived to let nature naturally grow inside it, through it, so that the whole become a landscape that is both manmade and nature grown.
Some years ago we deeply researched around some new urban structures. But instead of thinking for an identified place, we developed a number of patterns that we intended to be interesting proposals for public environment. Miami design district contacted us just at this very moment when things were growing, but were not settled. Appart this coincidence with our own research, the energy behind the transformation of the district was appealing to us. A conversation transformed into exciting exchanges, then the project was born.
Nuage-Promenade is not intended to drive a flow in one way or another, its aim is to provoke unexpected walk and stay. The structure naturally create colored shades, also noise and freshness through the ponds and plants. The path in itself is curvy and not linear; so that many sensations will be given to the one that cross. People will naturally behave in the passage like in a park.
Everything is about transparency and lightness. The main structure is floating at 3 meters from the floor, so that the landscape is still visually open, also, overall, clouds are mainly made of holes and empty zones, than volume and mass. So light and air will come through. This will create an ever changing atmosphere depending of the sun run during the day. The shadows will slowly evolve, their mass and color will nicely effect the surrounding, and the people. Ponds, plants, benches will react to all these slight changes. We can imagine that in few years, when the interlacing between plants and man made Clouds will have further develop that the atmosphere will be stronger and stronger. Materials are chosen to old nicely, taking a natural patina."
(Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec)
Image Courtesy of Ronan et Erwan Bouroullec
comment