After visiting for the first time Barragan’s studio house I found myself out in the street thinking to myself how was it possible that such a master piece was located in a street like this, a place with no special attributes at all; I thought that maybe this street had more surprises hidden behind those secretive walls. A house with a grey facade caught my attention so I decided to get close to it; the door was open, the curiosity was stronger than me so I found myself in the hall and in no time I was walking down the stairs. It had to be some kind of museum because all sorts of objects were displayed in little podiums, design objects I figured. I walked trough them but I wasn’t really acknowledging them because my eyes were caught by the garden on the other side of the glass; that green! It was just unbelievable that a place like this could be hidden behind those grey unfriendly walls. I came close to the door and decided to explore the place, I hadn’t that kind of feeling, that urge since I was a kid. The trees were so big, so green, the smell was indescribable, and I thought that the tropical forest should have this kind of scent… Suddenly I noticed I wasn’t alone, there was a man sitting on the grass playing with a wool cord and on the other side, a girl standing backwards wearing a dark coat, staring at something… I felt I was being part of some sort of strange scene, the sky was turbulent; I thought I just had become a character in a Böklin painting. The girl was staring at a strange object in the garden, it seemed like a giant pile of leaves with some black objects coming out of it, I figured it could be the remains of some antique creature, the shell and the skeleton maybe, the only thing I knew for sure was that whatever it was, it had been sitting there for a very long time. Suddenly the girl started to walk towards it and in no time I lost sight of her. I decided to follow her into the creature. After walking a few steps it was clear that I was wrong, this weren’t the remains of an animal but more of an old building. After crossing the glass door, I found myself in a mysterious space, a curvy wooden wall and a ramp luring me, I just couldn’t stop walking, accompanying me, on my left hand a yellow perforated wall with an odd shape, it was as if Barragan was having a very bad dream about his Talplan’s chapel famous wall. The ramp described a spiral around something, and this weird wall was hiding something behind it… I finished the descend and out of the blue I found myself inside the shell I had seen in the garden before and there was light all around me! I had just entered another world; the place had the ability of conveying the same kind of vitality as the garden but in a very different way. The shell was formed by a white grid and it reminded me of the traditional paper screens you can find in traditional Japanese houses with this faint light coming from behind. I saw the girl on the other side of the room and walked towards her, she noticed me, I smiled and she smiled me back. We said hello and talked for hours, first inside the shell and then back in the garden, she told me this place was conceived as a venue for people of the arts&craft scene, that the pavilion was created as a mixture between design and architecture , all the structures were designed in wood, the shell, the curvy wall, the continuous bench, the structural ribs… so that constructing it would be like building an ikea object, for example the shell was formed by a series of interlocked wood boards with no ironwork at all! Every afternoon different kind of events took place, exhibitions, conferences concerning different kind of subjects and people from all the neighbourhood came to attend them resulting in very enriching synergies. There was never a sad grey streets neighbourhood after all; the walls were just the guardians of hidden magic places waiting to be discovered.
© federico ortiz . Published on March 20, 2013.
© federico ortiz . Published on March 20, 2013.
© federico ortiz . Published on March 20, 2013.
© federico ortiz . Published on March 20, 2013.
© federico ortiz . Published on March 20, 2013.
© federico ortiz . Published on March 20, 2013.
© federico ortiz . Published on March 20, 2013.
© federico ortiz . Published on March 20, 2013.