Installation at the Landscape Biennale BAP! at Versailles.
We are interested in the relationship between buildings and their services – or you could say: between the building and its guests. While architecture is a slow discipline and buildings should be made to last for a long time, services follow a different trajectory. They facilitate our desires for comfort and are subject to technological progress. Our understanding of comfort shifts while systems that provide electricity, temperate environments and safety are subject to constant development. The more independent this infrastructure is from the architecture, the more flexible the buildings, and the more resourceful we could be as our lives change and we, as guests, move from building to building.
Therefore, in order for architecture to preserve its integrity and remain resilient our buildings need to be defined less by functions but rather its materiality, beauty and a certain generosity that allows them to be appropriated, loved and re-used over time – similar to the building that houses this exhibition.
We see our installation in this very room as yet another guest that inhabits these spaces. A lightweight, independent electrical circuit with a set of lights that illuminate the interior in a powerful and playful manner, easy to dismantle and move on. These lighting prototypes are shown together with two photographs of Villa Ruba, taken by Antoine Espinasseau, a part restoration, part new build under construction in Arnhem, Holland. We like the dialogue between the seemingly ‘slow’ un-finished and yet un-programmed spaces and these specific, functional devices that inhabit these spaces for a short period of time.
- Location: Paris
- Completion: 2022
- For: Pap Versailles
- Size: 12 m²
- Collaborators: Antoine Espinasseau
- Team : Francisco Pereira, Léopold Castin:
- : The solar energy system was kindly sponsored and delivered by Xunzel.
- Photography: Antoine Espinasseau