Laurino Dwellings Subiaco
Finalist for the 1% for art for the construction of dwellings in Subiaco.
The Laurino dwellings Artwork is located onto the wall that separates the dwellings from the park. The fencing will be reduced and the wall will be raised; although, from the side of the inhabitants of the dwelling 3&4, the wall retains the intimacy of their home yet providing an “open window” to the green feel that the park provides.
“Palette” consists of 10 concrete colourful slabs embedded in the wall with a slight “relief” from the surface of the wall. The dimension of the slab is 100cm wide x 70cm high. Each slab has either a design drawn onto its surface or a “low-relief” rising from it. They are all unique in their design as well as their colour. Ideally, the retaining wall should also be of different colours so that the colours will stand out in their complementarity. A colour is vibrant only when it is set close to another colour which reveals its properties out and enhances its tone and hue. They live through each other’s quality; they are complementary.
The slabs are deliberately aligned, as the house design is already symmetric. The colours will have the extensive role of introducing dynamism in the symmetric setting. The wall will keep the partitions as it is designed. The artwork will be spread along the 19m length of the wall.
The designs will be an abstracted version of the architectural drawings of the dwellings. Some drawing will be stripped bare to the essential line. That will create a drawing with a balanced composition of lines, curved or straight. The abstract designs will evoke some ideas, sometimes having a textural feel to it. As you will see illustrated in the drawings of the artwork, one design reminds of an electronic chip, other by its intricacy, threads a “French lace” effect on the surface, another slab will uphold cubist heritage in a low relief format...The texture of the concrete combined with the technic used on the surface will create many different interpretations.
What is fascinating about architectural drawings is that despite their highly functional purpose they display all the virtues of an artistic fine art drawing; composition is balanced, the negative spaces are as important as the positive spaces, symmetry and asymmetry are always making sense and the line are mesmerizing the viewer-especially to a viewer not familiar with the “language” but yet aware of its clear targeted purpose. As beautiful as Hieroglyphs!
The slabs will offer a vast field of elucidations. They will be somehow enigmatic but not out of reach for the pedestrians and park users. Hopefully the viewer will be drawn to it from a distance thanks to the colours and repetitive pattern of the display and then will come closer and closer “reading” the slabs as if they would give away a secret.
The choice of concrete is firstly because I have a passion for concrete; it offers such an amazing range of creative possibilities, it is textural, malleable, strong, resistant to outside conditions and it is a low maintenance material. Anything is possible with Concrete. It allows experiments, playfulness and flexibility. It is used in engineering, for buildings but also for off shore constructions in the coating of deepsea pipelines! etc.. Furthermore it has been around since the Antiquity...fascinating really. Unfortunately in the 70’s it was misused in some housing developments in Europe... Concrete can be mis-interpreted due to some not- so-glorious years.. I love to take that challenge aboard.
Palette is an attractive artwork that will through abstraction gather the qualities public art has to possess: Be accessible to the crowd. Everyone should be able to grasp the aesthetic of it without intellectualising it too much.
The Laurino dwellings Artwork is located onto the wall that separates the dwellings from the park. The fencing will be reduced and the wall will be raised; although, from the side of the inhabitants of the dwelling 3&4, the wall retains the intimacy of their home yet providing an “open window” to the green feel that the park provides.
“Palette” consists of 10 concrete colourful slabs embedded in the wall with a slight “relief” from the surface of the wall. The dimension of the slab is 100cm wide x 70cm high. Each slab has either a design drawn onto its surface or a “low-relief” rising from it. They are all unique in their design as well as their colour. Ideally, the retaining wall should also be of different colours so that the colours will stand out in their complementarity. A colour is vibrant only when it is set close to another colour which reveals its properties out and enhances its tone and hue. They live through each other’s quality; they are complementary.
The slabs are deliberately aligned, as the house design is already symmetric. The colours will have the extensive role of introducing dynamism in the symmetric setting. The wall will keep the partitions as it is designed. The artwork will be spread along the 19m length of the wall.
The designs will be an abstracted version of the architectural drawings of the dwellings. Some drawing will be stripped bare to the essential line. That will create a drawing with a balanced composition of lines, curved or straight. The abstract designs will evoke some ideas, sometimes having a textural feel to it. As you will see illustrated in the drawings of the artwork, one design reminds of an electronic chip, other by its intricacy, threads a “French lace” effect on the surface, another slab will uphold cubist heritage in a low relief format...The texture of the concrete combined with the technic used on the surface will create many different interpretations.
What is fascinating about architectural drawings is that despite their highly functional purpose they display all the virtues of an artistic fine art drawing; composition is balanced, the negative spaces are as important as the positive spaces, symmetry and asymmetry are always making sense and the line are mesmerizing the viewer-especially to a viewer not familiar with the “language” but yet aware of its clear targeted purpose. As beautiful as Hieroglyphs!
The slabs will offer a vast field of elucidations. They will be somehow enigmatic but not out of reach for the pedestrians and park users. Hopefully the viewer will be drawn to it from a distance thanks to the colours and repetitive pattern of the display and then will come closer and closer “reading” the slabs as if they would give away a secret.
The choice of concrete is firstly because I have a passion for concrete; it offers such an amazing range of creative possibilities, it is textural, malleable, strong, resistant to outside conditions and it is a low maintenance material. Anything is possible with Concrete. It allows experiments, playfulness and flexibility. It is used in engineering, for buildings but also for off shore constructions in the coating of deepsea pipelines! etc.. Furthermore it has been around since the Antiquity...fascinating really. Unfortunately in the 70’s it was misused in some housing developments in Europe... Concrete can be mis-interpreted due to some not- so-glorious years.. I love to take that challenge aboard.
Palette is an attractive artwork that will through abstraction gather the qualities public art has to possess: Be accessible to the crowd. Everyone should be able to grasp the aesthetic of it without intellectualising it too much.
