by Elena Sommariva

The small town of Lacoste, in the south of France, seems to have been excavated from a single block of limestone: just a few hundred inhabitants and a spider’s web of narrow streets and terraces enclosed within thick medieval walls. All around, fields, vineyards and expanses of lavender make up a soft landscape that changes with the effect of the wind and light.

In this bucolic setting, the campus of the Savannah College of Art & Design offers courses in art history, architecture and restoration to students from the United States. Lectures are held all year round but during the summer months activity is intensified with a packed calendar of events. The need to host events and offer a place for getting together has led the college to commission New York practice nArchitects with the design of a temporary structure.

With a limited area available, the team – Eric Bunge, Mimi Hoang and Daniela Zimmer with Takuya Shinoda and Shuji Suzumori – has designed and built together with SCAD students two tall pavilions (up to eight metres high) set at the top of the fortress and held in dynamic equilibrium thanks to a flexible structure.

Fifty kilometres of special polypropylene rope were required to build Wind Shape, stretched and woven inside a lattice of curved plastic tubes to create a series of floating forms. The pavilions change shape, inflating inwards or outwards according to the intensity and direction of the wind and according to the amount of tension in the rope. The same material has been used to make seats and work surfaces, with paths and windows also made from rope.

nARCHITECTS was founded in New York City by partners Eric Bunge and Mimi Hoang in 1999. Their work focuses on responsive and flexible design concepts and innovative building techniques that redefine conventional notions of program, type and context. Recent awards include The Architectural League of New York’s Emerging Voices (2006), an AIA Design Honor Award (2005), the Canadian Professional Rome Prize (2005), Architectural Record's Design Vanguard (2004), the MoMA/P.S.1 Young Architects Program (2004).
https://www.narchitects.com