exhibitions

SEVEN LAMPS
Biennale Saint-Étienne 2002

Site-specific environment was set in an industrial heritage facility, a former elevator entrance to the mine, converted into a museum. Its strongly defined and distinctive architecture demanded sensuous ambientizing rather than a collision with the existing surroundings. Horizontal platforms floating above the floor and virtual projections were used. Their content was an abstract matrix relating to the architects' concepts rather than to their embodiments. It was a statement about the contemporary tension between the ritual and virtual parts of a given environment as reflected in corporeal atavism and electronic naturalism, enacting the conceptual leap from a visual civilisation to an audio-tactile culture and architecture with no scale, no typology and no style. Referencing Ruskin, P&R brought forth their own Seven Lamps of Architecture.