This tunnel made up of wooden profiles was made by NAS Architecture to arch in excess of the fortifications surrounding a historic commune in the south of France .
Described by NAS Architecture as a vortex, the Haven installation was commissioned by the heritage organisation National Monuments Center of France. It wraps over the medieval ramparts surrounding Aigues-Mortes.
The pavilion is created up of ten plywood sheets that each feature a uniquely shaped cutout. When assembled in a linear formation, the negative spaces line up to produce an arched tunnel.
“The aim was to play with contrasts and to offer an additional way for walking on the outdated walls,” architect Johan Laure told Dezeen. “We needed to produce a adverse shape that acted as a vortex, and metaphorically represented the passage of time.”
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“The wooden form corresponds to two distinct employs – the interior and the exterior,” Laure stated. “From the interior the aim was to develop a new geometry to the passage by disrupting the straight lines of the rampart which have been required for a defence building like this a single.”
Elevated hoardings from the Middle Ages were a starting up point for the studio, whose past projects consist of a mirrored waterfront pavilion in Marseille that moved with the wind. The hoardings offered a reference for how to set up the structure at this kind of a height.
They also sought to emphasise the contrast between the ramparts and the wooden sheets, aiming to produce a pavilion that is “as present as the rampart on some factors of see”.
“We have been inspired by the density of the materiality,” stated Laure. “The rampart is strong and quite present, so we were considering about a technique that can permit the pavilion to be as present as the rampart on some points of view and sometimes extremely fragile.”
From the outside, visual trickery tends to make it difficult to comprehend how the structure is suspended, and the angular form appears to get on a “softer form”.
“From the outdoors the pavilion seems to have a softer form than the interior,” stated Laure. “At first glance you can’t understand how the pavilion is hanging, and the aim was to generate a shape that would seem to interact with the rampart as a plier, and is humble and respectful to its background.”
Other modern day additions to historical fortresses contain a pavilion of wooden walkways in the grounds of a Copenhagen castle, and a limestone-clad visitor centre at a Portuguese stronghold.
Photography is by NAS Architecture.
