A cluster of colourful pavilions by Charles Holland Architects is the setting for a Cambridge exhibition of technology-based art
Commissioned by Cambridge arts organisation Collusion to produce a temporary multidisciplinary and immersive exhibition exploring the relationship between art and technology, Charles Holland Architects devised a family of four freestanding pavilions which would both protect artworks and have a striking presence in the exhibition’s busy location at Cambridge Leisure, Cambridge Junction. “Designing an exhibition outside has specific challenges, not only to keep out the weather but also to form a context for art where people might not be expecting to come across it”, says the architect.
Each pavilion hosts an individual artwork. One of the artworks – the ‘Blockchain Totem’ – sits in the centre of the space, “redolent of a monument or cross on a village green”.
CHA’s design also needed to relate to Collusion’s concept for the exhibition and the nature of the technology-based artworks. “Our design responds to these various factors by forming what we have called a ‘digital village’, a small, temporary settlement of similar but subtly differentiated objects”, says the architect.
Pavilion roofs slope in different directions so that each appears to be addressing a different corner of the square in which they sit. The shape of the structures is “simultaneously abstract and subtly figurative, with extended parapets suggesting signage and a desire to communicate”, says CHA. Each is clad in a combination of coloured corrugated metal and birch-faced plywood, suggestive of functional, economical buildings such as garages, business parks and light industrial units. “The use of everyday and industrial building materials provides a reference to the often faceless places where the emerging technology explored by the artworks is produced”, says CHA. “At the same time, the use of colour lends the pavilions a playful, decorative quality. These are subtly communicative and minimally decorated sheds: the coloured screw caps offering a suitably pragmatic form of ornamentation”.
Working with engineer Morph Structures and contractor Jonathan Wells, CHA constructed the pavilions to form a public space within the wider one of Cambridge Junction. “Their relationship to each other and to the site is intended to be enigmatic”, says CHA. “Part of the environment but also removed from it.”
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