After visiting the Gehry pavilion and having mixed reactions to it i decided to go down to southbank and visit the much smaller David Adjaye pavilion done for the London Design Festival.
The pavilion sits opposite the brutal concrete mass that is the Hayward Gallery and the juxtaposition of all that cold concrete with the warmth of Adjayes timber is large plus to the pavilion experience.
Once on the inside of the pavilion it instantly grabs your attention and doesn't take you time to create any sense of enclosure like the gehry pavilion. The pavilion is basically a cylinder created through as far as i can tell the slotting of the tulipwood, although there places where you can see tension cables within the cylindrical structure.
the roof creates a stalactite effect that creates incredible natural lighting.
according to adjaye the pavilion is designed to test the limits of American tulipwood which isnt taken seriously as a material.
After viewing the two pavilions i cant help but feel that Adjayes was a more rewarding experience. Exactly why that is im not sure, but i believe the scale of the projects has something to do with it. Adjayes was more personal and to a human scale while gehrys scale was immense and unattainable experientially. So maybe it is a question of scale, not only of the overall form but the individual components that make up the structure from massive timber beams to intricate tulipwood beams with beautiful connections.
(ps the DRL ten pavilion was today auctioned off for 45000 pounds!! and this pavilion is off for the auction block in a couple of days)
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The imagery of all that wood interacting and filtering the light is certainly beautiful..
reminds of that time i was the lumber yard on 'shrooms...
Dubba again!!! Good shot!! is this only for me??? please?? pretty please?? (my self esteem is low)
on another note, i dunno how it really feels to be under the vertical pieces, but the pictures give me an indiana jones feeling like those things are going to fall on me,, the tension is really engaging
The man is really thinking. I am impressed.
unfortunately, my camera died at night the pavilion is lit from within and really changes the space around the pavilion (more 'shrooms effects)
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