Art Prison Favignana
Art Prison Favignana is a proposal of a path, and eventually architecture.
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developed with Stanislav Kurakin
The proposal for Art Prison Favignana is to be considered as a landscape intervention, based on the theme of the path as connector and generator of rooms and emotions. The architecture project is therefore sustained by the intention of giving a possibility to experience the site either alone or in public through different guide paths. The path is a spiritual moment happening on the landscape, where to free the prisoner in us, experiencing nature and art in solitude, thanks to space, rooms, architecture. This assumption is the core of the following statements and considerations.
The art-themed spaces lies onto a magnificent site where the Fortress and the building aside are the dominant structures of a more intense volumetric experience: the rock and its heights. The rock, the existing buildings are to be considered as memory of the site, centre of balance of the future composition. The natural massive walls of the fortress, and the alcoves inside of them, generated the immediate address for spaces of intense and isolated art-works and labs, spaces where to admire installations and collections. Furthermore it becomes also an exclusive site where to experience a luxury hospitality with a dedicated aisle inside the fortress. Finally, terraces on top are extraordinary spaces for events, with a magnificent view on the very height of the whole site, eventually landing lots for helicopters.
In order to design new spaces, the process took its start from the reading of the existing path, considered a spiritual escalade to the top. Using a parallel grid to the existing path as a device of planimetric verify, it was immediately clear to interpret the project as a landscape intervention of double aspects:
Two rigid axes strike the landscape, generating and defining a space in-between and, in the meantime, emphasizing the limit of the site. This is where main functions are hosted - restaurant, belvederes, rooms for art, exhibition, market.
A hidden path lies onto the site and valley, crossing heights, guiding the visitor to more remote regions where she/he is eventually able to find out hubs and pavilions to rest, meditate, experience the landscape.
The language apparatus for the intervention comes after a conscious problem. How to interpret the landscape and the existences through a system that could eventually suits the new volumes and system. The chosen solution for this issue is to refer on two materials for two systems:
Stone. Mineral solution for what lies onto the ground - so does the fortress and the rock itself; Through the theme of massive walls, as a direct reference to the fortress, the new stone volumes lie onto and into the ground, hosting exceptional rooms from where to experience the program maintaining the view on the landscape, holding a strong relation to the ground.
Wood. Organic apparatus for what climbs the site. This system, that consist of a repetition and variation of a wooden-framed module generates a essential structure with a elegant shape deduced by its static necessities. Moreover, this solution steadily guarantee possibility of views through the landscape. While maintaining the strictness of the structural path, temporary walls and partitions can transform the same space into different scenarios - market, hotel-cabins, art promenades.
The interpretation of Art Prison Favignana competition eventually consists of a landscape intervention. The ensemble of existing buildings and the rock is already the most relevant architecture design. New interventions try to respect these heights, generating new flexible spaces, the majority of what is temporary.
Art Prison Favignana is a proposal of a path, and eventually architecture.
developed with Stanislav Kurakin