Mexican architect Frida Escobedo has added a series of adaptable mirrored platforms to the V&A museum’s central courtyard, referencing an ancient Aztec city constructed in excess of a lake .
Frida Escobedo was invited by the London museum to create a summer season pavilion in its John Madejski Garden – but she instead decided to create a versatile stage that can be reconfigured for different routines.
“A pavilion must be some thing that is activated and asks queries,” the architect advised Dezeen at a launch occasion.
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“It is much more about the folks and how they interact with the piece than the piece itself – the piece is secondary,” she explained.
Using the landscape of Tenochtitlan – an Aztec settlement that has because been engulfed by Mexico City – as a beginning level, the architect planned a technique of curved and rectangular steel-frame platforms that sit over the courtyard’s lawn, paving and shallow pool. Every has adjustable feet so it can adapt to various levels.
They will stay on website for just more than four months, but will be moved into a number of different arrangements in the course of that time.
Collectively, they are intended to represent the numerous multicultural influences that coexist in contemporary Mexico.
“We utilized the Mexico City grid as a way of articulating these platforms, but not just in terms of obtaining this nostalgic image of the land – we wished to have some thing modular that could be reused and readapted to the museum’s programme,” said Escobedo.
“The complete thought was about this notion of sporting a mask,” she additional. “This is an appropriation of a space and it adjustments the encounter of the area temporarily, like a mask. And that generates distinct characters, just like in theatre.”
The unique aim was to give each platform a reflective stainless-steel surface. It was imagined this would be also slippery, so the metal was sandblasted to create stripes – half mirrored, half opaque.
Escobedo was a single of four Mexican architects shortlisted to generate the framework, as part of a yr-long celebration of Mexican culture in the United kingdom.
It is entitled You Know You Can’t See Your self So Nicely as by Reflection – a reference to Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar.
“It is a pavilion that embraces itself as much as it can,” extra Escobedo. “This is not who we are, this is my interpretation of what Mexico is, and it’s a lot more crucial for me to produce action than to just present our culture.”
It will remain in location right up until two October and will kind an occasion space for the duration of the London Style Festival.
Photos are courtesy of the V&A.
