Intended for use as an exhibition space at trade fairs, the design for the CRICURSA stand is based on a close link between the materiality of the project and the object being exhibited. The stand was meant to serve as an example of CRICURSA’s ability, as a manufacturer of architectural glass, to produce a wide variety of geometries and finishes – full-scale prototype, so to speak. The inspiration came from the properties of silica; it has an interesting crystalline structure that ultimately defined the essence and conceptual design of the project.

The geometric complexity results in an architecture capable not only of reflecting the virtues of this raw material in terms of a specific morphology but also its materiality, by using different shapes and colors. As a result, the envelope demonstrates the performance of the product and the many formal possibilities it offers as a support for surface engravings. At the same time, it can be adapted with a wide variety of transparencies and gemstone shades. Thus, the exhibition space is surrounded by a series of folds that house the different programs: a permanent exhibition area, a meeting room, interactive screens, a storage space, and a corporate zone. The interest, which ON-A shared with the client, lay in reflecting CRICURSA’s ability, as a manufacturer of architectural glass, to execute the complex geometries and finishes involved in building the stand. Straight, folded, and spherical glass pieces come together to form the series of planes that take on a structural function, supported by a polyhedral steel mesh – a skeleton that establishes the main guidelines that shape the folds of the three-dimensional network, with an identity that transports us back to the earliest origins of glass.