Stone Pavilion at the Marmomacc 2007
Kengo Kuma & Associates
On the 5th October, at the Marmomacc incontra il Design show (which will take place in Verona from the 4th to the 7th October 2007), the Stone pavillon designed for Il Casone S.p.a. of Firenzuola (Pad. 6, stand c2) is to be presented by architectural master Kengo Kuma. After the celebrated works Stone Museum in Tochigi, Louis Vuitton in Osaka, Tokyo Agriculture Museum, the Nagasaki Art Museum, Lotus House and the recent Ciokkura Park in Tochigi, Kengo Kuma tackles the theme of lithic lightness with renewed creativity, initiating an intriguing interpretative and only apparently paradoxical journey: the immateriality of architecture. A “constructed immateriality” based on the antimonic rapports of solid material and luministic evanescence, of gravity and suspension.
In the Verona Pavilion, the traditional stonework becomes hollow, the walls lose their sense of heaviness so typical of conventional stone buildings. The design team coordinated by Kengo Kuma and formed by Javier Villar Ruiz, Kengo Kuma & Associates; Roberto Bartolomei, Il Casone; Stella Targetti and Francesco Funari, Targetti Sankey S.p.a.; Alfonso Acocella, Università di Ferrara; Luigi Alini, Università di Catania, proposes an interpretation of lithic lightness which draws on tradition to devise powerfully innovative solutions. Thousands of pietra serena extraforte slabs form a kind of “perforated wall” in which the material is distributed and spread around the voids. The stone modules, tetrahedrons obtained by assembling three 25x25x1-cm slabs each weighing some 5 kg, have a sharp-edged finish. This solution aims to enhance, on one hand, the precise geometry of the elements, and on the other, the more evanescent presence of shadows created by the delicate lighting system designed by Targetti. The light, crossing the cavities diagonally in an upward direction, gives life to the hollow spaces of the material and enhances the relationship between mass and void, making the walls appear to fluctuate. Such a result exploits a device of the stone weft. Where the floor surface meets the wall base, the modules thin out, lose mass, where in actual fact structural performance would require its enlargement. Once again, Kuma appears to want to place us before a paradox, contradict a “static necessity” in order to enhance the choices made in the design proposal. During the opening of the pavilion, the video Stone pavilion. Dal progetto alla costruzione, will be shown.
> Roberto Bartolomei