U15 Novello Eligio: Salzmine mit Seminarraum - best architects 09

U15 Novello Eligio

Salzmine mit Seminarraum

best architects 09

other buildings

Place

Bex | Schweiz

Studio

www.u15.ch

Photos

Novello Eligio

Description

The seminars space is outlined within the tourist course of Bex salt mine. Functional object, sculpture? The stake lies in the use of a shifted architectural vocabulary, which scrambles the reference marks and openly denies any demonstration of a constructive or technical know-how. All must be evanescent or be born from the flesh of the rock to highlight the nature of the occupied cavity. Such is the objective. The intervention uses glass and light, which split the walls thus, creating space. The staircase, triangle of pure geometry that’s pouts out from the ceiling hardly touching the ground, is embraced by rays of light which invite the spectator for a tour. Concrete, a familiar material of underground structures, artificial and malleable, is born from the rock, spreads, tightens and becomes the table that flows over the rough pavement. The saliferous rock is recomposed into walls. The gratings of circulation float on a carpet of light. What’s heavy becomes light. Norms are reversed. Time suspends its takes-off.