Francis Kéré is the latest architect commissioned to design a new permanent pavilion on the grounds of the 10,260-acre Tippet Rise Art Center in Montana. Nestled in a cluster of aspen and cottonwood trees on the banks of a flowing stream, the design of the 1,900 square-foot pavilion is derived from Kéré's 2017 Serpentine Pavilion and his 2015 canopy structure for the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art.
Kéré's design pays tribute to the traditional sacred toguns of the Dogun people in Mali, which are shelters made from ornamented wooden pillars that are carved with representations of one's ancestors, and a roof of layers of wood and millet straw.
Built from locally sourced logs of ponderosa pine and lodegepole pine, the Tippet Rise pavilion will be a round structure connected to a circular aerial bridge that spans the stream. Touching the ground at only a few points to preserve the landscape as much as possible, the bridge will include seating areas where visitors can enjoy views of the surrounding natural landscape.
The pavilion will have its own interior seating, which will be strategically placed underneath a sculptural canopy of vertical logs to create a “rain of light” effect. Visitors can also climb onto a sculpted platform on top of the canopy to observe the landscape, while children can explore a “color cave” tunnel. The irregular loop shape of the seating area was partly inspired by a series of paintings by Tippet Rise co-founder and artist Cathy Halstead that are based on the abstract forms of microscopic life.
“Standing on the high meadow of Tippet Rise Art Center, looking out at the mountains under a vast sky, people can face nature at its widest scale. But with this pavilion, Tippet Rise offers a more intimate experience of its landscape within a quiet shelter, where people can access the most secret part of nature: the heart of the trees,” Kéré describes in a statement.
Kéré will collaborate with local project architect Laura Viklund Gunn of Gunnstock Timber Frames in realizing the pavilion, which is expected to open in summer 2019. In conjunction with the commission, the Tippet Rise Fund is supporting the construction of the new Kéré-designed Naaba Belem Goumma Secondary School in his native Burkina Faso.
4 Comments
Back a few years when I was green and golden, My companions and I would ride over the ranches nearby the Tippet Rise lands looking for cattle to gather for friends and neighbors. The rise forms a broad and spacious oceanic plateau with the mountains beyond looking like islands.
The scale is vast lying under the Big Sky. The B52 bombers from bases in South Dakota would fly low level, under the radar, training missions over the ridges and into the coolies. Occasionally one would rise up from the fold of a near coolie hidden sound and sight hidden by the terrain. Imagine the sight of a very large airplane suddenly appearing and roaring like a primeval monster.
Remarks were made that upon seeing some cattle in the distance, "we'll have to ride into next week to get to 'em." or "by the time we get there they will have died of old age, and been replaced by their calves".
This is to callout the design objects placed about the Tippet Rise as "trivial" with respect to the near and distant landscape. Perhaps they serve as anchors, touch stones, to folks from other locations with denser landscape.
The landscape is enough, not in need illumination with bits of decoration.
"Kéré's design pays tribute to the traditional sacred toguns of the Dogun people in Mali, which are shelters made from ornamented wooden pillars that are carved with representations of one's ancestors, and a roof of layers of wood and millet straw"
yes this makes a lot of sense. in rural montana. on stolen crow land. bordering a national forest named for a murdering racist.
tippet rise had a lot of potential, but instead it seems to be about making bunch of meaningless forms on a picturesque landscape without calling into question the construction of the land itself, or the picturesque gaze in the west, or the ongoing practice of oppression towards native bodies and ways of life.
also nothing about a ranch is natural. its managed land. totally constructed. the west is not some untouched primordial territory just waiting for the appropriate insertion of architectural form to celebrate its "naturalness".
Excellent! Probably my closest opportunity to experience a Kéré design and a good excuse for me to return...
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