Turtles all the way down
Year
Location
Status
Co-authors
Area
2023
Gund Hall, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
Built
Pablo Castillo, Fernando Garrido, Sarah Hopper, Dhruv Mehta
5 m2
The OFFICE KGDVS-designed Kenzo Tange Pavilion "American Architecture (Model) is a “1:1 scale model” of a pavilion. Our installation is a model of this model of a pavilion. Formally the project is a series of continuous regressions in scale which raises questions about the status of representation and the differing intellectual associations inherent to such scalar jumps. We intend to link these jumps to subtly intervene in the social space that the pavilion wants to engage.
OFFICE’s pavilion shifts in its reading between a model and a piece of built architecture. Our model of a model acts as an attractor point within the field of the pavilion, also performing in a reflexive move as the referent for the actual structure.
“The desire for stable origins [in architecture] always turns up empty.”
Stan Allen’s words are an appropriate encapsulation of the idea that architecture exists within the realm of representations of the built work, not the built work itself. The idea of scaling, much like a Russian doll, is thought of as an endless series of models nested within each other which raises this very question of the locus of architecture.
Here, these models serendipitously come into contact with the virtual social space and become usable. The 1:5 scale becomes a table used for a DJ station for Beer ‘n Dogs, the 1:10 scale acts as a bench, and the 1:20 scale acts as a footstool. Hence, the role of function is questioned through formal gesturing, recalling Eisenman’s experiments at Cannaregio in 1978.
The intervention activates the space by giving it a temporary center, and once the models are removed, the space returns to its originary status. After the exhibition, the table, bench, and footstool would be taken to different locations to act as models of social interaction in elsewhere. The intervention, we hope, would initiate a conversation about the idea of the model and its potential in the social space.