Before the collective contract and right after ourassumed singular subjectivity, there laysan individual mirrored into another individual, this is: the couple. This unified character, epitomized in the double portrait (e.g. van Eyck or Hockney), is the idealized and certainly romantic inhabitant for this artful but enigmatic piece. The figure, a stable equilateral triangle with almost no thickness, a kind of scaleless pediment without a building, becomes the theatrical stage for a dramatic double relationship: frontal to its single access, there is an open projection beyond its interior, turning the façade into a threshold between here and there; while inside, the projection becomes a direct, intimate and unavoidable relationship between one person and the one at the opposite end.
Who are they?
Perhaps a real couple (mother and child, two friends or two strangers), perhaps a fictional one (you with your dreams, your idols or your shadows). The pavilion is indeed a space out of the everyday world. It is a room for two, a resting room, a meeting room, a charged void. It is a vertical split, a gap in the ordinary life,simply transfigured into a supernatural domain, even a superstition,by an asymmetrical sky peephole that crowns the only unreachable inner corner. Such is the tension within this compact artifact.
From afar, its regular outline will exude a sense of discreet monumentality, not only a sign of itself but a timelesslandmark. In apparent contrast to the surrounding landscape, its mirrorcladding (in a regular stone-like pattern)is meant to unveil the subtle humors of the local weather.Conceivably, the flat figure will become a screen;a sun in the snow or a frozen pyramid for summer holidays.
*Note: The pavilion is meant to have two lives; a temporary one at the urban context of Seoul Biennale of Architecture and a permanent afterlife for a new botanical garden in Gyeonggi province.
Team:
Client: Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism (Seoul Metropolitan Government)
Author: Pezo von Ellrichshausen (Mauricio Pezo & Sofia von Ellrichshausen)
Collaborators: Beatrice Pedrotti, Lukas Vajda
Local architect: Simplex Architecture
Structural Engineer: Garam Structural Engineering
Construction: Joosung Design Lab. Co. Ltd.
Biennial Director: Byoung Son Cho
Biennial On-Site Curator: Sara Kim
Sponsor: Medongaule Garden
Photography: © Pezo von Ellrichshausen
