REV[au]LTHEQUE pavilion unveiled by ARISTOTHEKE EUTECTONICS

In the Corbusian dilemma “Architecture ou Révolution” ReVaultheque howls: both!, and explores architecture as revolution, actually ‘revolting’ at modernism and ‘revolving’ architecture itself; ultimately merging these two acts into a single project. Forged on the notion of revolution – etymologically linked to the Latin revolvere and simultaneously connoting rotation as well as mutiny – the entire scheme gyrates around a single central axis, and conceptually orbits around the mythical notion of the earthly vault, the habitable cave.

 

Visually, ReVaultheque hovers between the naiveté of a Halloween pumpkin smiley, the smoothness of a mushroom pileus (cap) or a medusa’s bell, and the grotesque of a re-inhabited insect carcass. This… revolute ensemble – that may be considered as willingly unfinished, thus announcing a ritual entry to subterranean burrows – actually reworks absurdly conventional form-making techniques distantly evoking the biomorphism of the ‘50’s and 60’s, particularly Johansen’s Spray Houses. This conceptual mastering of gunite is structured and re-allotted here on a canonical, rigid and austere geometric parti that merges two (seemingly) opposites: the organicist with the platonic or the neo-palladian.

 

Simply, a series of serpentine outlines revolve in plan for certain degrees around their edge, the planar center of this circular amoeba. The radial extrusion of successive sectional profiles appears as ‘sliced’ concentrically by thinner slivers – closed profiles acting as the architectural poché – generating individual yet flawlessly interlinked sub-spaces periodically sequenced along the dome perimeter. Triads, re-iterated here as trinacria, are critical in this three-level case of rotational symmetry, or more precisely,  threefold or trilateral symmetry: a triskelion of radial stairs – positioned at 120° intervals – lead visitors from the outdoors to the main concourse level. From there another triplet of stairs, rotated at 60° in relation to the former and equally radiating out from the central Z axis, directs hordes of troglodytes upwards to a second plateau. There, a single stair connects to an apex, the topmost level that enjoys an outdoor feel and closer views to an oculus permitting direct sunlight and thus light-washing the entire construct. The hexagonal mandala defined by the circulation diagram was initially studied as a series of planar topographical contours yet later transmutated into vertical wedges. Sectionally the overall troulos begets a ziggurat superseded by another inverted ziggurat, and those beget an onion-shaped dome – enclosed as an open-air void. This quasi-spherical echinoidea, a monocoque urchin shell punctured and re-scaled, is launched here appropriately as a Serpentine pavilion scheme for London’s Hyde Park, inaugurating a habitable species of ceremonial and contemplative nature, amalgamating two Hellenic archetypes that address metaphysics: a volcanic re-iteration of the tholos and the earthly tymbos (τύμβος, Σορός) or tomb; a materialized point on earth’s surface; A mound undoing death and linking to the pure skies. Revoluble architecture may have been Bucky’s secret obsession…, in any case was Salvador Dalí’s most powerful motto; in fact, ReVaultheque was just spilled out of his Galatea of the Spheres.

 

And now, in our banal everydayness, your next excel pie will never look the same again!

 

Aristotheke Eutectonics ® Office of Architecture, Research and Design. Designer + Director: Aristotelis Dimitrakopoulos (AD). 

Team Credits Modeling: George Dimitrakopoulos, George Trikouzas, AD. Presentation Editing: George Apostolopoulos, AD. Photographic Editing: Maria Roussaki, AD. Text: AD. Duration: 2011-13. Status: Unbuilt.