Sans titre (Le Jardin des diversions)

Creation of a public art on ARTEM campus
Nancy, France
2013
Client: Solorem, Ville de Nancy
Berger&Berger
Team: Luke Gleeson, Théo Vachon, Corentin Vendryes, Paolo Migliori
Collaborator: Bollinger + Grohmann, France (Structural engineering)
Executive producer: Eva Albarran & Co

All at once sculpture, architecture, and garden, Le Jardin des diversions is constructed with materials commonly found in modern architecture: glass dyed in the mass and steel, fundamental materials of modern architecture. It is composed of six layers of glass panels dyed in black (38 percent transmission of light) that form a regular, 250 cm‑high grid of twenty-five 500 × 500 cm cells. A mirror when seen from outside the structure, the dyed material allows for the transmission of light and the transparency from one “layer” of the pavilion to the other but only to a certain extent. Wherever the observer finds him- or herself, the transparency is not total throughout the entire structure. The openings are set up so that the gaze cannot traverse the whole apparatus from north to south or from east to west. This pavilion is organized in a radioconcentric way, from the center to the periphery. But unlike the panoptical principle, the gaze, from the central cell, constantly runs up against a wall. Each layer of glass is qualified by the same degree of transparency. The accumulation of all of them produces a phenomenon of absorbance and therefore of the pavilion’s relative opacity.