The weighty boulder above the head of Sisyphus provides us with an image that materializes the concept of gravity.
Building with stone is building with gravity, as Architecture has always done. So when architects discovered they could also build with light, that they could dominate it, they began to derive enjoyment from architecture, because it was then that the miracle occurred of light conquering gravity. Gravity and light, the two central themes of Architecture.
In this pavilion for PIBAMARMI we want to highlight the value of gravity, of the weight of the boulder over a man’s head: the myth of Sisyphus.
We placed a very large low-hanging stone suspended in the air under which the visitors to the pavilion must pass. An enormous stone measuring 4x4x1 m floating mysteriously and provocatively in the air.
We surround it with light with a veil of taut white silk forming a semi-cubic figure measuring 8x8x4 m which, when mirrored by the reflective floor, reconstitutes the form of a perfect 8x8x8 m cube. Crossing the mirrored floor, cutting spaces of 2x2 into the silk, is a pathway of white Carrara and Thassos marble staves 2 m wide.
Compressed as they pass below the enormous hanging stone, visitors will encounter on the reflective floor various baths, wash-basins and other Pibamarmi elements that appear horizontally and vertically symmetrical.
At the end a transversal room, with the same white stone paving as the pathway and a great container for Pibamarmi.
