For the event of the Jinji Lake Biennial, MARC FORNES / THEVERYMANY installed a large-scale outdoor pavilion on the elevated plaza of the Suzhou Center. Its undulating enclosure interrupts the usual traffic, as an unexpected, emergent environment. It appears to have bubbled up from the ground, or dropped from the sky. The structure, both massive in scale and delicate in white aluminum, lands lightly on an ultra-thin edge.

A continuous surface grows from a network of columns that peel open into the enclosing shell. Topologically, there is no simple dichotomy between envelope and supports, but the two are made from a continuous skin that self-supports throughout. The relationship is like an unwrapping: what is inside of the columns eventually becomes the outside of the shell. In aluminum parts as thin as 1mm in places where the curvature is tightest and up to 2mm thick on larger spans, the structure maintains a light impact on the ground.

The intricacy of the skin asserts a density: of limbs, of openings, of parts and their connections. You have to let your eyes adjust to the resolution of the experience. Unfocusing your gaze again, the whole scene overwhelms, strikes awe, compels you to move closer, deeper, and through an edgeless space. The doubly-curved surfaces cast no regular shadows, giving little information to the eye to perceive its scale or depth. The only way to understand the space is to move through it. 

And so it becomes an irresistible terrain for play. All the instances where columns branch and recombine into the bulbous shell, make for an architecture that opens to climbing, ducking, hurdling, hiding and seeking. Children are the best explorers of this environment, while attending parents wonder how the structure sustains this activity despite being so thin.

Read more about the structure and its inspirations at theverymany.com.