Already dubbed the "Scandinavian Pavilion" by Olafur Eliasson and Kjetil Thorsen ("Snohetta"), critically acclaimed as the best project of the gallery's eight-year architectural program, or at least equal to the remarkable 2002 building by Toyo Ito and Cecil Belmond (ARUP) … It is also the tallest structure of all: at a height of 15 m, it somewhat suppresses the main building of the gallery.
This year's pavilion is built of plywood sheets mounted on a steel supporting structure. The rich brown color of the building is the result of the treatment of its walls with a water-repellent compound. Its shape is a slightly inclined cone that encircles an open ramp, which has time to make a full turn before taking the visitor to the top of the structure. There he is nevertheless invited to enter the pavilion, and from a small balcony look down at the spacious hall that makes up his inner space. This darkened room illuminates an oval window at the top of the cone, but since the entire structure is slightly off-axis, this oculus does not give the impression of looking from above, as in the building that the architects deliberately focused on - the Pantheon in Rome.
To appreciate the pavilion of Eliasson and Thorsen, you need to go around it from all sides, go up and down the ramp, enter and exit the hall. This is what the authors aspired to - to make a person take a new look at his perception of space; it is necessary not only to see this building, but also to experience it with the other four senses, and also to be aware of it in motion. Externally, the building resembles a children's spinning top or the "spiral slide" attraction, popular in the UK. But the roots of his figurative language, of course, are much deeper - suffice it to recall the minaret in Samarra. The game with the organs of perception, and, most importantly, with the human consciousness, is continued by the program of events that will take place in the pavilion until the beginning of November. This year, these are not open discussions with the participation of artists, critics, theorists of art and architecture, but a "series of public experiments" in the fields of psychology and physiology. But it is not hard to guess that the main "experiment" of this program is the pavilion itself.
