A temporary architectural pavilion installation was proposed for the Swell Sculpture Art Festival 10th anniversary. The pavilion would operate as a multifunctional nodal piece of artistic infrastructure throughout the duration of the festival. A continuous flow of visitors threads through the landscape following a string of varying sculptures. This Ferris wheel-like cyclic rhythm is apathetic to particular subjective states such as contemplation or reverie.
The domicile of the festival acts as an incubator for artistic inspiration and conception. The edge condition of Currumbin Beach formed by the layers of flora, fauna, sand, and ocean is stunning bare, without any inflection of civilization. The additional lamina that the festival provides is a celebration not only of this landscape but also of the local people that inhabit it. The nature of the event, organised as a loop transversely down the coastline, is one of movement.
The inability to truly cease, prospect, and engage within past festival experiences naturally led to the discussion, and later, the manifestation of potential design interventions. An exciting speculation, the thought process at its core seeks to intensify the event as opposed to transmute it. Through this lens, a concept originated from a true percept of the festival.
A concept obsessed with accessibility and community, defined by the ephemeral, and crafted equally by optic and haptic sensibilities. A concept titled Seizing Impermanence. So, we asked, what can we create that captures, engages, and informs visitors of the festival in a meaningful way?
The introduction of a pavilion, defined traditionally as an elementary room confined by the thresholds of a roof, sequences an array of design solutions and opportunities associated with both the festival at present and the concept derived from its operation. Dyadically primed with type and concept, the strategy of this construct, like all works of architecture, is informed by the dialectic between the “calculative” and the “meditative”. The calculative consists of the purely pragmatic and rational necessities required of the assembly. The meditative, less firm than the former and lacking rigour by nature, is acutely aware of the phenomenological experience and atmospheric semblance of the space.
