SARAB
Concept Design | Saudi Arabia | 2022
“Sarab” is a public event and exhibition space, capable of holding up to 100 people, built up from a dramatic geometric reflective structure placed in sand. Through its expressive materiality from mirroring faceted geometries, the pavilion captures, reflects, absorbs, and projects the ever-changing surroundings, presenting visitors with a unique experience when inside. The project is prefabricated and assembled onsite, built up from steel and stainless steel mirror panelling, and lit up with white LED lighting. The project is designed to be a travelling pavilion that can be dismantlable and rebuilt in various locations.
The project is based on the concept of duality that one can find in cultures and religions across the world. On the one hand, there is the idea of ‘perfection’ and ‘purity’, as represented by the circle or the sphere. This represents ‘idealism’, ‘centrality’, ‘control’ and through that ‘comfort’, but also ‘aspiration’ and ‘hope’ for something larger, for ‘divinity’ On the other hand, there is the idea of ‘entropy’ and ‘unpredictability’ found throughout our everyday lives; ‘perceived volatility’ and ‘change’, which in return presents us with ‘chance’ and ‘opportunity’. This quality can be observed throughout ‘nature’ all around us.
Design tools available to work with these concepts include ‘logic’ and ‘mathematics’ for the former, as exemplified in for example the purity of platonic shapes. The latter can be incorporated through the embedding of for example ‘randomness functions’ inside those logics. Applied to the topic of ‘light’, this can be made visible through the idea of ‘kaleidoscopy’.
LEAD DESIGN TEAM | Kristof Crolla, Julien Klisz, Kelvin Ho Nam Ip, Romi Yujie Liu
STRUCTURAL & FACADE ENGINEERING | Atelier One Ltd.
ENGINEERING TEAM | Aran Chadwick, Neil Thomas, Ewa Hazla
CURATOR | Molten Immersive Art & The Mandala Social
CURATORIAL TEAM | Dorothy Di Stefano, Ryan Stephens, Derrin Brown