Location: Sibiel, Romania
Architect: Rodeanu Bogdan Catalin
Lake Pavilion
Restaurants and bars
The origin of the concept has two layers-the first one is the vision and request of our client, and the second one is our perception about design in general and how we think we should wield it as a tool to enhance our humanity.
The client contracted us to design a wedding hall in Sibiel that could hold up to 400 people. His wish was that we make the space darker, to fit the nighttime events that would happen there. The building's location was also important for the final design, being near a lake, we searched for a way to tie the hall to the water and its symbolisms.
The most important question we had to ask ourselves is how do we mentally link the lake with the pavilion and with wedding events?
We look for inspiration and arguments for our design gestures in medical studies, anthropology, biology, psychology, technology, general cultural context etc.
For this particular project we found a poem by Mihai Eminescu, The Lake, from which we extracted the symbol of the water lily, that is often associated with unity, purity and resurrection. Knowing that water is the source of life on earth we linked these two elements with the theme of weddings in the way that the wedding means a rebirth, the start of a new life.
Another symbol related to water comes from Tudor Arghezi's poem, In a Lake, from which we extracted the fact that the lake is the mirror of the sky, which is the reflexion of infinity. Infinity is a word magnetically attached to love in our culture so it became the main symbol around which we designed the space.
We designed a custom carpet, around 400 sqm, on it the abstraction of the water lily appears as a four-petalled flower, also named the pattern of life, and reflects in the ceiling. The infinity sign can be found only by mentally linking the reflexion of the carpet with the main lamp, that sits at the node of the infinity sign.
There are some concept sketches attatched to the document where you can see where the symbols morphed into materials and elements of our design.
It is true that form folows function and you can see that beauty in every project designed by nature.When it comes to projects made by men in many cases the structural part does not go hand in hand with the aesthetics. We studied the ratio between lenght, width and height and decided we should make the ceiling taller.But, because we agreed to only work on the interior, thus not being able to change the building's structure, we gave the illusion of height by using a barrisol like material that looks like a black mirror. This was also useful because this material is very light and the pavilion only has a tent like metallic structure that couldn't hold heavier materials.
Besides the psychological-functional argument i had a conceptual argument for this ceiling-because of the tent like structure the wind stirs the rubber ceiling, creating a movement that mirrors the waves of the lake.
We also tried to bring in echoes of water by decorating the bar with custom 3D panels carved with a CNC.
The material that best supported our project's philosophy is Ariostea's Luce, that we used to decorate the most important areas of the space. The first is the bridal table, behind which we created a tridimensional structure entirely decorated with Luce. The reason for the layering is that we wanted to add led strips to best bring out the material's microstructure, thus enhancing the most significant space of the hall. We also used Luce to decorate the bar area, creating a pillar that encapsulates the slamp tulip lamp, that is shaped as a circle. The entrance is also decorated with Luce because we wanted the people to be in contact with the material from the first step they took into the chamber.The material offers a beautiful macrostructure of waves from a distance, but only from observing the microstructure up close we can understand it properly.
The moodboard contains materials and objects with characteristics that sustain the project's philosophy.The cromatic choices are supported by anthropologic arguments- using blue leads to mental links to water, or the sky, and, more importantly, the use of the contrasting blue and yellow can remind of the sight of a sunset, or a starry night. This color association has also been used and studied for centuries by many different painters and artists in the world.
The effect of yellow and blue is created with the use of the slamp tulip, on the contrasting background of Ariostea's Luce Blu. This lamp is made up by many small tulip shaped light sources, suspended on almost invisible cables, all positioned at different angles to make them look natural, organic.
Another important dimension of the project is the cultural context, because in this area of the country most event halls are decorated with classical architectural elements, to make them look more luxurious.
We believe in challenging the status quo , we believe in thinking differently and with the client's approval we decided to take a leap of faith and ignore the fact that the classical recipe works in this area and we created our own recipe of dealing with all the psychological and aesthetic aspects of the project.
As language is the consequence of logic, the spaces we use should be designed with reason and logic to sustain the full spectrum of our needs, from simple functional characteristics to conceptual-philosophical aspects.
