The 'Les Marais' project begins with a fascination for the built landscape of the empty space that characterizes North American rural areas, large flat expanses studded with groups of buildings. Apart from a stylistic interest in these abandoned barns, they inspire me with two perceptual problems: The first concerns the relativization of scale. The dimensions of these buildings, sometimes windowless and isolated evokes an identity quality of our territory: a vast expanse often out of scale for the observer. The second problem arises when these buildings are combined with others, their fortuitous arrangement creates voids that 'draw' a sort of transition place between the buildings and the space around them. I see in this the potential for a significant place, an embryonic collective space.
Another aspect of the composition refers to the idea of the 'perceptual'. Depending on the observer's location in the neighbouring forest, the scales of the buildings are relative. The smallest seems larger as one approaches, even though it has the same profile as the biggest, which is then located farther away in the field of vision. This subtle experience of the 'subject', blurs hierarchies.
the wetland nature of this lakeside property, are preserved and form then the collective landscape of the built complex, relegating the lake to a truly public structure. A large 'plate' of black wood links the three structures to establish a common base, a sort of carpet for people in an environment otherwise left in its raw state.
A 'collective' space emerges from the composition, to become a crossroads of exchanges between the occupants of two of the buildings, the third building serving as outdoor storage.
Large cutouts have been made in each 'shape', also of black painted wood, to reveal the interior materiality of the red cedar buildings.
View Original