4th YEAR DORA MAAR ART CENTER

USC

Menerbes, France

FALL 2000

The design specifically responds to the vineyards extending beyond site.  The fields below where each plot of land seemed to have an irregular form always maintained order within that plot of land as to grow their crops in an effective way.  The spatial organization was derived from the existing grid of the MAAR house, and also from a typical monastery layout with cloister, chapel, garden, and dormitories.

Within the spatial organization dialogs and dyads express meanings through their difference.  Contrasts between the structural and organic, the historic and the new are discovered along the procession through space.  Vince pour out from large concrete columns and walls.  They stem across both a broken and a refined path.  along the path an opening to my right--the path is shrinking as a travel furhter along--frame a small light within a crypt, a black marble bench the dimensions of a coffin rest below the light.  Upon exiting I see the columns of vine establish a rhythm to the rough cut stone and boulders below.  The wall to my left frames my views to the vineyards.  I can choose the cut path of stairs along the wall or choose my own path through the rough cut stones and boulders.

I see ahead the columns march through an opening in a wall.  As if mirroring it on the opposite side, an opening is framed for me.  I enter through a pivoting door and see to my left a long strip of light, containing the landscape within a panoramic frame.  The columns than marched into the space now step down to form benches.  I sit and look for the source of water I heard upon entering the space and find it pouring out from the wall in front of me.  The space leaves only hints of the path just taken and now I can reflect.