To commemorate the 25th birthday of Vittorio Gregotti and Manuel Salgado’s Belem Cultural Centre, architecture studio Promontorio created an open sky installation built out of 100% recycled cork. A structure of irregular but rigorously assembled columns that incorporates the geometric model of the host building and reveals a powerful tectonic articulation. The modular cork blocks of 1 x 0,5 meters, which are paired on square bases, made a constant rhythm of solid and void. The column, in its systematic replication, is the fundamental element of the whole architecture as well as in Roman villas.
Inspired by the concept of “artificial excavation” coined by Peter Eisenman in 1987, the installation evokes the ruins of an archaeological site and reflects on the passage of time in architecture. A reflection that is accentuated by the contrast between the rusticated, fixed and durable stone of the surrounding building, and cork, an ephemeral and perishable material.
Beyond its symbolic value – the metaphor of ruin, the tension between permanent and temporary, the meaning and condition of architecture – these “squares in the square” of the Centre was conceived primarily as an experience. A summer framework of an open-air cinema, mysterious hallways to go through, columns to hide behind, a metaphysical scenario where time seems to stop.
- Project:
- A square in summer
- Place:
- Lisbon
- Architect:
- Promontorio
- Curator:
- André Tavares
- Client:
- Garagem Sul, Centro Culturale di Belém
- Completion:
- 2018
- Address:
- Praça do Império, Lisbona