Inhabitable Sculptures21. Nov2012
This project is a series of minimal spaces (less than 20 sq. meters), designed according to a specific typology of landscape. They are inspired by pure and simple sensations provoked by a specific outdoor scenery: a sea cliff, a sunflower / wheat field, a roof in a city, a dense forest.
Each Sculpture is designed as a land art installation that creates a trouble event in the landscape. But each Sculpture is also designed to be inhabited: It is a monastic place to retreat or to live in that offers a very singular point of view on the environment.
The minimalist approach concerns not only design but also function: these are not luxury fully equipped cabins lost in nature, but small scale intimate monasteries. A bare space that has no need for furniture: the interior design is included in the architectural concept. The only function of this micro-architecture series is to provoke a spiritual experience, to create a constant dialogue with its occupant." - Atelier 37.2
Sloping House."Sloping House is a makeshift shelter that clings to the side of an extinct volcano in the Puy de Serveix, in France's Massif Central. Built from recycled timber by the artists themselves, this sculptural one-person refuge, seems to erupt from the grassy slope, as if the structure's wooden planks are being flung out of the earth only to reform into the neat lines of an archetypal hut."
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On entering, you will be forced to crouch, as in a boat descending a wave. You will have the feeling of literally plunging into a skyless landscape and it is only when you seat yourself down on the strange, angular recliner within that the sky will reappear and you will experience the unique sensation of this peculiar vantage point."---
Seascape."This sculpture is to be set up on the shore: a cliff or a downhill land. We enter a minimal single room from an unlikely wall facing the sea."
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"The room shrinks towards a unique window. Whatever your position within the room, this window is a frame that only depicts the separation in between the sea and the sky."---
"By limiting our vision to an abstract section of the seascape, this Inhabited Sculpture creates a focusing potential. It works as a light-room showing an ever-changing Rothko monochrome painting."---
Floating Field."This Inhabited Sculpture is a wooden barge set just above the vegetation in the middle of a sunflower / wheat field. From faraway it seems to be floating. A narrow pontoon meanders up the field leading to the Sculpture. As we reach it, the pontoon gets wider and becomes a terrace. From this point view, we are on an island floating over a moving landscape, especially when the wind blows in the field."
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"37.2 is the result of an encounter between Italian architect, Francesca Bonesio and French photographer / art director, Nicolas Guiraud.37.2 is a micro-architecture studio. Our production and research are centred on the relational and narrative potential of space. Such as a theatre stage, architecture has a psychological and spiritual power that is at the core of our reflection. Beyond its aesthetics and function, we think of micro-architecture as an experience. It should have a power upon the imagination of people experiencing it. A power to stimulate ones’ imagination instead of shaping it.
Through its very familiarity a large part of our daily life remains invisible to us, compromising our ability to see and feel anything significant. Our approach consists of creating and applying spatial layouts that provoke a shift in our everyday perception. Mobility, transparency effects, contrasted densities, modularity are some components that prod the user’s imagination and stimulate personal and intimate fictions. Through a minimal language, raw and subtle at the same time, we create space within space, We develop an architecture that generates intensity. Each project is an artistic installation “in fieri”, an installation designed for an inside temperature of 37.2 ° celsius.
Through this approach, 37.2 develops: - Small-scale architecture projects for any kind of scene (private, public, individual, collective, social, spiritual) beyond the usual interior – exterior dichotomy. - A corpus of spatial installations more specifically designed for artistic and cultural institutions as well as for the public space.
Francesca Bonesio was born in 1976 in Torino, Italy. She has an M.A. in Architecture (2001) and a P.h.D. (2007) in Architectural Restoration from the Politecnico of Turin, where she teaches as studio assistant on the faculty of architecture. Between 2001 and 2008, she worked for different architectural studios in Turin and in Paris.
Nicolas Guiraud was born in 1970 in Bayonne, France. He graduated with a degree in Economics and Philosophy. He works with Magnum Photos between 1995 and 2007, where he becomes Creative Director in 2000. He founded two reviews for Magnum Photos : "M" and "Fashion magazine". Since 2001 he combines Photography (Documentary and Fine art) and Art Direction. He has exhibited his photographic work at the Arles Photos Festival, the Palais de Tokyo and Colette. He published "50 0fficial Portraits", a book about homeless people shot in studio in Paris."
Biography and studio presentation by Atelier 37.7
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