A temporary pavilion for the 2021 Brugge Triennale, TraumaA, Brugge, Belgium, The Diptych by PARA Project and Principal Jon Lott served as an event space for the event’s programming. Positioned mid-block and abutting a 15th-century canal house, the pavilion further addresses what its authors describe as the issue of urban trauma.
The wood-framed pavilion stood on 15 sistered pontoons so as not to make direct contact with the protected UNESCO Heritage fabric of the city. Its adjacency to the historic canal house is what Lott describes as a study in formal estrangement.
Despite this, through building orientation, material, scale, and posture, the pavilion recognizes something of itself in its neighbour – as its authors explain, both have their trauma to work through.
The project is the third in a serial study of urban “strangers,” including Lott’s Storefront for Storefront (2016) and the Roche/Dinkeloo Double, at the Fine Arts Centre, Amherst (2018). Common to these projects is the construction technique of ‘common framing’ in partnership with respective institutional urban concerns.
