Forking Paths
Summer 2020, Collaboration with Yiou Wang
Competition Entry for Reuse Italy
What is the dream experience like? The underground ruins of Piscina Mirabilis is a cave to dream in. In our proposal, we reinvent the rational syntax of arch and water, and invert the traditional relationship between architectural elements to generate an irrational, hallucinative underground gallery, where the dreamscape and reality is continuous and one.
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Summer 2020, Collaboration with Yiou Wang
Competition Entry for Reuse Italy
What is the dream experience like? The underground ruins of Piscina Mirabilis is a cave to dream in. In our proposal, we reinvent the rational syntax of arch and water, and invert the traditional relationship between architectural elements to generate an irrational, hallucinative underground gallery, where the dreamscape and reality is continuous and one.
Piscina Mirabilis, Bacoli (Naples)
Latitude: 43° 49’ 6.348’’ N
Longitude: 10° 24’ 57.888’’ E
The Piscina Mirabilis is an Augustan cistern situated on the Bacoli hill in Napoli. Our proposed gallery internalizes a public space and reimagines the presence of the ancient pillars. The new exhibition space slices gently into the historical reservoir and creates intensified spatial experience.
Without any revitalization to the roof structure, the exterior remains austere while it redirects visitors to the original entry through a narrow corridor. The anticlimactic entrance removes any aura and keeps the rich underground interior space cryptic in the modern world. The way to discover the gallery is driven by word of mouth in the neighborhood.
In the space of the ruins, the visitor is immersed in a maze where every location echoes another. Spatial experience is fragmented as in a dream; the visitor constantly tries to reconcile the orthogonal and the diagonal systems, the real and the dreamed mingled, the artworks and the gallery architecture unified, and the visitor’s perceptions amplified.
Without any revitalization to the roof structure, the exterior remains austere while it redirects visitors to the original entry through a narrow corridor. The anticlimactic entrance removes any aura and keeps the rich underground interior space cryptic in the modern world. The way to discover the gallery is driven by word of mouth in the neighborhood.
In the space of the ruins, the visitor is immersed in a maze where every location echoes another. Spatial experience is fragmented as in a dream; the visitor constantly tries to reconcile the orthogonal and the diagonal systems, the real and the dreamed mingled, the artworks and the gallery architecture unified, and the visitor’s perceptions amplified.
By repeating and reorienting the basic vocabulary - the arch, the stair, and the pond - we achieve multiplicity with simple elements. As numerous flying arches bridge the columns’ corners diagonally, a parallel system of 45-degree rotation arises. The high and low flying arches juxtapose different levels to experience the underground space, and different angles to appreciate the hanging and floating spheres - the artworks in the space. The columns are used as doorways, suggesting that a column could be inhabitable. That our subjective senses can invert the column and the void begs the question whether one reality can be interchangeable with another reality.
The circulation path attached to the forest of flying arches is fixed, while the programs on the periphery of the underground level are fluid.
