It is no longer possible to believe that knowledge can be transmitted by dictating information. Instead, we need to create mental or physical spaces in which to provide conditions (operative environments) capable of drawing out the knowledge that is present within the individual: only what people discover for themselves can be accumulated in their active memory. Only the knowledge that comes from within can establish effective links with other pieces of personal knowledge and lead to an individual progress and facilitate thought and action.

One hundred and twenty pieces constitute a deliberate testimony to an idea. The works possess an intrinsic beauty. All of nature is present in each one of them. All of the works are variations on a concept. Variations with repetition.

The presentation of the accumulation of exceptionally beautiful pieces individually cannot be done linearly. Neither beauty nor nature have either order or gravity. The visitor’s itinerary should not be envisaged as linear. There is no beginning and no end. Even the relationship between the pieces, which we asked to be organized in a cellular form (monothematic cells that relate a series of objects). need not be linear.

We defined crystalline microlandscapes based on the folding and wrinkling of the glass, in which the pieces were laid out freely in accordance with the energy generated by their aura to reveal an invisible system, constructing the relationships, a cosmos of cells, a choreography of UFOs that inhabit the space. A black box, a void scene where anything is possible. A scenography of natural states, a morphing downgraded to the immaterial.
The material fuses with itself. Nature.

EXPERIMENTING WITH GLASS

This project allowed us to explore the possibility of treating glass, a traditionally plane, rigid material, as a malleable material, that can be curved, drawn and distorted with great freedom.
CRICURSA, a Catalan firm founded in 1928, was the perfect partner for this project whose researches have made it possible to apply these techniques of making convex glass to other commercial buildings.

In the 19th century people created exquisite flowers of glass in the Natural History Museum at Harvard. In the 21st century we have created exceptional glass pieces to protect them.

Project: 1999
Construction: 2000
Client: Mission 200 en France. Ministere de la Culture
Site: Avignon Space Jean Laurent

Design Team: Vicente Guallart, Enric Ruiz
Assistant: Joulie Roualt
Comissaire: Jean de Loissy, Yves Le Fur
Producer: Alain Thuleau
Lighting: Philips
Glass: Cricursa
Exhbition Builder: BEC

Photographs: Giovanni Zanzi