Public Space

Lumen Poem, 2

Wood trellis, 9 x 8 x 7 meters, 1984, Rosny-sur-Seine

The Hospice Saint Charles in Rosny-sur-Seine offered the opportunity to work in a very pure environment of classical architecture. The Swiss architect Froelicher’s only work. The basis of this experiment was to create a « shadow making machine » : a kind of projector of shadows which drew on the architectural elements of the place and the spaces they describe as the sources for its perception.
The primary architectural elements of the chapel, its pediment, dome and cubic mass, having been taken in the form of elements made of trellis — today we would refer of deconstruction, were assembled in a completely different logical sequence from that of the edifice.
The logic, however, was not foreign to its architecture since its purpose was to recompose one aspect of its individual character — its essence — by projecting it.