LIGA 24: UMWELT
The House of Machines
November 2016 – February 2017
More than one hundred steel trays for electric cables are piled up to form an imperfect, twelve-sided cylinder in this proposal by the architects UMWELT, Ignacio García Partarrieu and Arturo Scheidegger. The artifact, of uncertain origin and uncanny presence, occupies the LIGA exhibition space to the point of collapse.
Its interior, reached by an aperture in the continuous texture of the pieces, conceals a journey without beginning or end through the methodological and project history of the Chilean studio. While past exhibitions by Pezo von Ellrichshausen, and RCJV architects incorporated images and working plans from the respective studios, whether in the form of miniatures hung from the walls of a 1:10 scale museum or assembled in a book, UMWELT proposes to build an architecture that hosts the representation of other, absent architectures.
This structure, conceived not only as a symbolic object but also as a space capable of condensing the flow of visitors, presents an exhibition within an exhibition, thus questioning the paradox of exhibiting architecture.
Photography: Luis Gallardo
