Deci Pavilion
Pavilion for the Foire Internationale d’Art Contemporain 2016.
This column, a hollowed octagonal shaft that decreases its size upon ascension, embodies an ambiguous scale, resonating with historic landmarks while distorting the perspective of the most monumental axis in Paris. As a temporary wooden monolith, the object has a familiar yet remote presence.
Technically, this little tower might be read as a tenth of another building. Literally, the name of the construction is given both by that conventional proportion to reality but also by its amount of levels, by its ten octagonal drums.
Despite its modest size, this ambitious tower echoes many fictions: a babel barbican, a ziggurat, a lighthouse, an epic pedestal or an obsolete telescopic observatory. Still, the tower is a genuine and tacit building, with enough room to be occupied by a single tenant (perhaps a voluntary prisoner, perhaps a guardian), which can additionally be understood as a mere part of a real building; a freestanding column.
As if following the ancient and arbitrary rule of “entasis”, besides a rather reasonable gravitational logic, each drum decreases its size upon ascension. Each side of the faceted drum has a simple rectangular opening. Since the opening does not change its size in the vertical succession, the whole system closes in itself the moment there is not enough room to place another opening on the wall.
This work further extends Pezo von Ellrichshausen’s research on the limits between art and architecture. The singularity and detachment of the wooden object reveals a method based on internal rules, on the almost tedious repetition of basic architectonic decisions, on a limited set of familiar resources for a unique sense of character and individuality.
