THE KISS
Organized by Abitare Magazine and Taobuk, «The space of books» is an architectural contest that was open to student, aiming at creating a small wooden pavilion to welcome books and public on the main Piazza of the city of Taormina, in Sicily.
«The Kiss» is the winning project of this contest, and has been built and presented in Taormina in June 2021. Through a simple shape, a circle split in two parts, the pavilion proposes to interact with public space, allowing different configurations while attracting curiosity, in a highly historical urban context.
The Kiss is an encounter between a book and a landscape. Between two wooden giants on a chessboard, two crowns like kings and queens moving together in a ballet of words. A festival is a cross- path between a place and different arts. It is under the wise eye of San Giuseppe, Sant’Agostino and the Torre dell’Orlogio, that this en- counter takes place, facing the mediterranean horizon. The pavilion acts like a kinetic object, attracting curiosity to invite visitors to come closer.
Shelter for books and for humans, the Kiss is an assembly. Two distinct elements sometimes polarised on the piazza, sometimes per- ceived as one contemporary object, in conversation with architecture. Just like a book, the pavilion is a container to be open, a sanctuary for thousands of stories. Not only is the Kiss a place to read other stories, it is a place of reunion. Conferences, interviews, even first kisses, can happen within it.
Conceived as a mini amphitheater, like a little brother for the Teatro Greco, the Kiss is a simple structure, made of 14 wooden batts bound together by circular shelves, and enclosed by an open-work skin giving it a visual porosity while offering a sensation of protection.
