“Rain of light”. New Pavilion by Francis Kéré at Tippet Rise Art Center
18/05/2018.
[Montana] USA
metalocus, INÉS LALUETA
metalocus, INÉS LALUETA
The pavilion also features strategically-orientated seating beneath the canopy, where visitors can “gather quietly to converse or contemplate the views or climb onto a platform sculpted on top of the canopy to observe the landscape through the leaves.” The form of the seating area was inspired by a series of paintings created by Tippet Rise co-founder Cathy Halstead based on the lyrical, abstract forms of microscopic life, communicated through the irregular looping of the pavilion’s seating.
Designed in collaboration with local architecture firm Gunnstock Timber Frames, the scheme is expected to open in the Summer of 2019. When completed, it will join the ranks of other noted architectural works across the Tippet Rise landscape, including several sculptural works by Ensamble Studios.
Diébédo Francis Kéré (b.1965, in Gando, Burkina Faso, west Africa) trained at the Technical University of Berlin in Germany, started his Berlin based practice, Kéré Architecture, in 2005. Kéré Architecture has been recognised nationally and internationally with awards, including the Aga Khan Award for Architecture (2004) for his first building, a primary school in Gando, Burkina Faso; LOCUS Global Award for Sustainable Architecture (2009); Global Holcim Award Gold (2011 and 2012); Green Planet Architects Award (2013); Schelling Architecture Foundation Award (2014); and the Kenneth Hudson Award –European Museum of the Year (2015).
Projects undertaken by Francis Kéré span countries, including Burkina Faso,Mali, China, Mozambique, Kenya, Togo, Sudan, Germany and Switzerland. He has taught internationally, including the Technical University of Berlin, and he has held professorships at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and Accademia di Architettura di Mendriso in Switzerland.
Kéré’s work has recently been the subject of solo exhibitions: Radically Simple at the Architecture Museum, Munich (2016) and The Architecture of Francis Kéré: Building for Community, Philadelphia Museum of Art (2016). His work has also been selected for group exhibitions: Small Scale, Big Change: New Architectures of Social Engagement, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2010) and Sensing Spaces, Royal Academy, London (2014).
Among his main works are the Primary School (2001) and the Library (under construction) of Gando, Burkina Faso; the Health and Social Promotion Center (2014) and the Opera Village (under construction), both in Laongo, Burkina Faso; the Satellite of the Volksbühne Theater at the Tempelhof Airport, in Berlin (temporary installation, 2016); or the Pavilion for the Serpentine Gallery of the year 2017.