The Box - 2nd post

In one of my first weeks here I had the chance to participate in someone else's world, or should I say box? Have a look…

For who doesn’t know, this is a pavilion designed by the Swiss architect Peter Zumthor. It’s a project from the Serpentine Gallery. Every year, during the summer this gallery invites an important architect to build up something in the provided space at Hyde Park, London. This year, I had the chance to visit it. But what should one expect from a black big box in the middle of the green field? I was curious to find out what waited for me in the inside. When I got there, the surprise…

Inside the black box, he placed a garden. Around the garden, some tables and chairs where people could sit and observe… observe the garden! At the top of the box there was a rectangular big hole where one could se the sky. Not as big as the whole surface of the pavilion but big enough to see a great part of the sky.

At first, I thought it was ironic, why to come inside to appreciate a garden if we could go outside and have the whole Hyde Park? But this did not seem to bother other people. Actually, they were pretty concentrated in talking and looking the green.  But then I realised, how often, when going to a park, we REALLY stop and look into the flowers, the leaves, the details, or even the sky? Did you look the sky today?

And this is not a romantic appeal for you to leave the building and see the sky, you probably had something more important to do. The issue here is how the architect made tangible and concrete something that is so familiar and so not known about the human being: we need frames! You can be an anthropologist and call it culture, a businessman and call it career plan, a mom and call it education… you can choose whatever you prefer… But can you recognise the box? I am not asking you to leave it. I am not even saying that you could (where to start without the frames?). I am just asking, can you see it?