Architect: MetamorphOse, Belgium
Location: Beziers, France
When five Belgian architects, Axel Cailteux, Celine Hautfenne, Delphine Termote, Amelie Schweisthal and Julie Neuwels, created MetamorphOse, the firm became an outlet for the young minds to rethink architecture in various scales. They use, as architects in different firms and with different centres of interest, their combined experiences of the city and the existing or future urban assets to put forward contemporary, sustainable or ephemeral interventions.
Impression of the Infinite is a landscape installation created by MetamorphOse on the occasion of the Heureuse Coincidence, a yearly festival of contemporary architecture.
An installation though doesn’t necessarily involve building new volumes or making a large scale construction. It can also include the notion of modifying a point of view, which will have an impact on the way we perceive a given area; a simple gesture which does not modify the landscape itself but rather the way we see it. This is exactly the approach taken by Impression of the Infinite: that of organising an event-volume, an installation though which dreams and fantasies can emerge.
Starting from this premise, the intervention adopts the symbol of the butterfly effect, relaying the idea that even the smallest element can have a phenomenal impact on its environment. A symbol conveyed through the project’s double character, that of catalyst and multiplier.
Using mirrors, PVC spheres, and small phosphorescent balls, the installation’s abstracted cloud particles do not change the physical landscape, merely the way we see it. Mirrors that are positioned like morning dew on artificial blades of grass return a deformed and reflected image of the environment. By representing the environment in this way, each event is multiplied by its reflected image, a 360° mirror which also reflects the images reflected by the other globes, generating infinite reflections in a series of multiple, yet concomitant worlds.
Technical info: PVC spheres
Picture credits: MetamorphOse