Expo 01
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A certain quantity of energy
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Our proposal for the Neuchâtel Arteplage [artbeach] at the 2001 Swiss National Exposition is designed to act solely on the quality of the air, as an architectural act performed on the raw material of architecture, which is space. Thus, there is no longer any recourse to shape, image, volume or surface. The aim is to work on the air itself, to alter its chemical characteristics and bring about a change in the physiological relationships between the human body and the environment. Thus, architecture ceases to be a composition or opposition of heterogeneous elements such as figure and background, shape and surface, filled space and void, but becomes an internal change in what constitutes space, i.e., air as a physical medium. Space, improperly described as a vacuum, is recognized in its corporeality. The result is a reconquest of space as a quantity of air and air as matter, with its weight, density and physical and chemical characteristics, in which the human body is immersed.
The reality of space today can no longer be treated on the macroscopic level alone, apprehensible solely within the visible realm. Carbon monoxide pollution, loss of the ozone layer, increases in both UV and radioactive radiation, as well as electromagnetic smog, are now so many qualifying elements that can be used to describe the space in which we live. If architecture has traditionally been occupied with the shape of space and the design of its surfaces, it seems of greater concern to us today to understand the intrinsic nature of space as a physical, chemical and biological substance. To stylistic work concerned with architectural shape, we have added work on the elastic deformation of air. Instead of having a "signifying" architecture as a new type of visual symbolism, we act on the nature of the waves present in space and our physiological ability to react to them. From the superficial level of surface and volume, we reach into the depths of the air.
The forum of the Neuchâtel Arteplage for the Swiss National Exposition is composed of a series of spaces arranged in a progression. The path of this progression can be followed either on the ground level or on an upper story : it is the decomposition and recomposition of space itself. In this approach we apply the characteristic analytical method of science, beginning with something that forms a unit and breaking it down into ever simpler and more basic constituents. This reduction and analytic classification are the basis of an understanding of the physical, chemical and biological mechanisms of the world that provide the keys to a specific act of transformation of things toward artifice. We first define spaces possessing great richness of light. This spatial definition manipulates the air itself, since the waves emitted create nothing other than plastic deformations of the air. The architecture literally sculpts space by manipulating it formally. We program a gradual depletion of white light to violet light, moving on from there into the invisible region of the ultraviolet. From the white light we remove red, then orange. In the next room, the wavelengths corresponding to yellow are eliminated, followed by green and then blue ; this is followed by a second-to-last room bathed in monochromatic violet light. From there we pass into the invisible : first, ultraviolet A radiation, which acts on the epidermis, then UV-B radiation, which penetrates more deeply, to the dermis. There is nothing more to be seen, with the possible exception of a few parasite frequencies. However, a profound internal physiological relationship is set up between the human body and space, an organic relationship in which the skin is transformed by tanning, in which vitamin D forms in the body. The progression continues, more deeply into the invisible to UV-D, a germicidal electromagnetic radiation. Disinfecting air and water, this long-wave ultraviolet radiation destroys viruses and bacteria that attack other life forms. When the visible is left behind, therefore, space that was believed to be empty acquires a dimension that is both curative and harmful.
The light is then recomposed in reverse, wavelength by wavelength, from the invisible infrared to white light.
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expo 01
Design
- Expo.01, Neuchâtel, Switzerland, September 1998 to February
1999
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Décosterd & Rahm, associés
Collaboration : Antoine Robert Grandpierre, Blaise Duc
with Guscetti & Tournier - AIK Expédition Lumière,
Yann Kersalé - Desvigne & Dalnoky - Reinhard Design AG - RFR,
Ingénieurs Civils - Proplaning SA - Scherler SA - Riedweg &
Gendre - fabric | ch