Interface – 1994

At the time of the opening of the competition for the creation of a piece of art in Prilly, the site, located in the suburb of Lausanne (CH), seemed to mark the exact meeting point of the city and the countryside.

At a smaller scale, the site itself presented the same configuration: a group of constructions comprising habitations, a bank, a post office, a shopping centre, a cinema, a pharmacy, a car park etc., is replicating the city, appearing able to propose an autarchic frame of life to the inhabitants. The field, in front of the buildings opens the site towards the countryside. Between these two 'statements', the Market Place, where the products from the rural country, fruits, vegetables, cheeses, meat, flowers, are proposed to the townies... Not the real city nor the real countryside. Just their representation.

The purpose of the piece itself is to replicate the same conjunction again, at an even smaller scale.

Borrowing its vocabulary from architecture, the first version of the project proposed a dialogue between a romantic 'rural' construction and a strict modernist metal structure, both offering a shelter to users. The two edifices were linked by a double rank of columns, a curved line separating the grassy field from the paved area.

Keeping the same scheme, the realised project, simplified, abandons both constructions and consists in just one line of seven columns creating a light screen between the two elements. A progression in the proportion of vegetation (countryside) and concrete (city) on the columns, illustrates the conjunction. In an inverted position, the column entirely covered with leaves stands on the paved part of the site and the concrete one, on the field's grass...