La Petite Forêt
La Petite Forêt is an art installation by Galaxy Arch, showcased at the 2024 Xintiandi Design Festival, located in the green space of Taipingqiao Park. This year's Xintiandi Design Festival is curated with the theme "A hybrid playground" aiming to break down the boundaries between disciplines, exploring freedom and joy in modern life, removing barriers, blending differences, acquiring new knowledge, and sparking contemplation.
A hybrid playground
If, like me, you harbor a dream of pastoral idyll, you will surely be enamored by the summer's insect chirping, the warm breeze on your face, the dappled shadows of the trees, and the chilled fruit in your lunchbox. At this moment, nature gives you a big embrace. Close your eyes, and the surrounding warmth creates a psychedelic color before your eyes, then quickly dissipates, hiding within your breath.
Traveling back to the fifth year of Yuanfeng in Huangzhou, Su Shi once said: "Only the clear wind on the river, and the bright moon between the mountains, can be heard and seen, taken endlessly, used inexhaustibly." Because the same breeze caresses us, words can transcend a thousand years, and I firmly believe in their profound meaning. If anything knows no boundaries, it is nature. Nature constructs time and space, breeze and moonlight, joy and dreams.
The installation is born from a series of imaginations about nature. It is a maze, a dwelling, a fantasy. It has no direction, can grow, and will wither. It is temporary, yet eternal, fragile, yet strong. It is a sanctuary for people and a playground for animals.
An adventure of light
The daytime bustle and the nighttime bizarre are two facets of La Petite Forêt. If nature had a readable heart, would its flamboyant surface reveal another aspect? What hidden corners might exist in this boundless paradise bathed in sunlight?
Day and night are two different light adventures. During the day, sunlight penetrates the installation and spills onto the lawn. The ground reflects the sky and surroundings. Walking within, the changing scenery creates the basic experience of La Petite Forêt. The glowing columns and semi-transparent surfaces provide a different spectacle at night. The distinct panel textures are illuminated, casting the columns' shadows, creating a shadow play that is enchanting and unpredictable.
A construction experiment
La Petite Forêt is composed of 33 steel-wood composite columns of varying lengths, supporting three identically sized, differently angled semi-transparent panels. Each panel is supported by a 3x4 grid of regular columns, forming a structural unit. Each unit is rotated 120 degrees relative to each other, sharing a column, forming a stable cluster. This rational combination ultimately forms an organically complex planar structure and spatial experience. Just like in nature, where rich forms are constructed from simple basic particles, this principle of simple origin and rich results embodies the philosophy behind La Petite Forêt 's design: the finite and the infinite are not irreconcilable. They represent the contrast between the micro and the macro, the causal logic between reason and intuition.
Each column is composed of an angle steel pair and two pairs of specially sectioned elm wood, forming a 6 cm diameter column. The columns are connected to pre-embedded short column heads on the ground beam through sleeves for quick positioning and installation. The highly integrated columns support semi-transparent panels made of steel and acrylic frames, covered with DuPont paper, creating three thin surfaces. These panels carry tree shadows and transmit light. The semi-transparent panels are fixed to the columns with bent steel plates and bolts, deliberately maintaining a certain structural distance, giving them a visual sense of being both connected and detached. This distinguishes the support elements from the covering elements, reflecting the fragile nature of La Petite Forêt. Some parts can gently sway, even teeter, avoiding permanence and immovability, aligning with our expectations for an adventure in nature.
This installation continues Galaxy Arch's exploration of steel-wood materials. If the Dapi Mountain Pavilion and Jinji Lake Pavilion showcased the basic physical properties of these materials, La Petite Forêt delves more into their semantic expression at extreme dimensions.
