The Chilean architecture firm Pezo von Ellrichshausen has designed a "peculiar" pavilion in Fyshwick, a suburb of Canberra located to the east of the South Canberra district in South Australia and about 280 km from Sydney.

Developer Molonglo commissioned the studio to create a structure for his 14-hectare compound on Dairy Road, located in the suburb of Fyshwick. Dairy Road es una zona posindustrial que actualmente se encuentra en transformación para convertirse en una comunidad de uso mixto. The pavilion, titled Less, is intended to be a focal point of the development.
This pavilion, which its authors, Pezo  and von Ellrichshausen, did not want to give a name, to generate greater expectations about its abstract result, is part sculpture, part water fountain, reflecting pool (by including a linear path of water in reference to nearby wetlands), and focal point of a large landscaped area of the real estate development, known as Green Spine and designed by Oculus.

The water covers a series of five horizontal square platforms each measuring 10.5 meters by 10.5 meters. At one end, 36 columns emerge from the ground according to a square grid, which supports a raised platform three meters above the ground, which is accessed through a circular ramp located at one end.


Less Pavilion by Pezo von Ellrichshausen. Photograph by Rory Gardiner.

Less Pavilion by Pezo von Ellrichshausen. Photograph by Rory Gardiner.
 

Project description by Pezo von Ellrichshausen

This is a pavilion without a name. It is a nameless pavilion; less than a structure, an infrastructure. It is an idiosyncratic place that refuses to be called in a single manner, with a single word. A place that even declines to be called a pavilion (since it would remind those colourful insects who jump from one flower to another, resting in balance for a fleeting moment).

This is an object without a name. Probably not even an object but a thing. Its form is rather basic; a square plan with a 2:3 ratio in elevation. Within this format, there seems to be a single element repeated without hierarchies. This relentless arrangement can be understood as the very rhetoric of structural behaviour (since it not only resists its own weight while transferring to the ground the unpopular effort of supporting the sky). It might also be read as evidence of a kind of fear of not being able to do so.

In its monotonous gesture, in its tedious regularity as much as in its lack of direction, bold columns and slender pillars erode any other function than that of framing every other function. Many events are allowed in unlabelled places. Of course, nobody could live in such an intricate domain. The mutest wall always gives us a hint.

Naturally, one enters works of art of curiosity and then returns to them because of nostalgia, morbid boredom, or artless worship. We were told that untitled works remain open. Yet, anonymous ones do not lack an author, only a family name. Ironically enough, blank pages could be anything. Both timeless objects and nameless things are so much more.

More information

Label
Architects
Text
Pezo von Ellrichshausen. Architects.- Mauricio Pezo, Sofía von Ellrichshausen.
+ + copy Created with Sketch.
- + copy Created with Sketch.
Label
Design team
Text
Fabian Puller, Olga Herrenbrücks, Amelie Bès.
+ + copy Created with Sketch.
- + copy Created with Sketch.
Label
Collaborators
Text
Local Architect.- Dezignteam.
Structure.- Northrop.
Landscape.- Oculus.
+ + copy Created with Sketch.
- + copy Created with Sketch.
Label
Client
Text
Molonglo.
+ + copy Created with Sketch.
- + copy Created with Sketch.
Label
Builder
Text
Creative Building Services.
+ + copy Created with Sketch.
- + copy Created with Sketch.
Label
Area
Text
330 m².
+ + copy Created with Sketch.
- + copy Created with Sketch.
Label
Dates
Text
2022.
+ + copy Created with Sketch.
- + copy Created with Sketch.
Label
Location
Text
Fyshwick, Australia.
+ + copy Created with Sketch.
- + copy Created with Sketch.
Label
Photography
+ + copy Created with Sketch.
- + copy Created with Sketch.
Pezo von Ellrichshausen is an art and architecture studio founded in 2002 by Mauricio Pezo (b. Renaico, Chile, 1973) ) and Sofia von Ellrichshausen (b. Bariloche, Argentina, 1976). They live and work in southern Chile, on a farm at the foot of the Andes Mountains.

They are Professor of the Practice at AAP Cornell University in New York and have been Visiting Professors at the GSD Harvard University, the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, the University of Texas in Austin, the Porto Academy and the Universidad Catolica de Chile.

Their work has been exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, the MAXXI in Rome and as part of the Permanent Collection at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Carnegie Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.  They have been invited to the Venice Biennale International Architecture Exhibition (2010, 2016), where they also were the curators for the Chilean Pavilion in 2008.

Among other venues, they have lectured at MIT, Princeton University, Columbia University, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Architecture League of New York, the Tate Modern, the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Alvar Aalto Symposium and the Royal Institute of British Architects.

Their work has been distinguished with the Mies Crown Hall Americas Emerge Prize by the IIT, the Rice Design Alliance Prize, the Iberoamerican Architecture Biennial Award and the Chilean Architecture Biennial Award.

The work of the studio has been widely published and edited in monographic issues of El Croquis, AV in Madrid, A+U in Tokyo, 2G in Barcelona and in the essay books Spatial Structure (B Architecture publisher) and Naïve Intention (Actar).

Mauricio Pezo (b. 1973) completed a Master in Architecture at the Universidad Catolica and a degree in Architecture at the Universidad del Bio-Bio. He has been awarded the Young Architect Prize by the Chilean Architects Association and the Municipal Art Prize by the Concepcion City Hall.

Sofia von Ellrichshausen (b. 1976) holds a degree in Architecture from the Universidad de Buenos Aires where she was distinguished with the FADU- UBA Honours Diploma. She was the president of the jury at the Venice Biennale International Architecture Exhibition (2018).
Read more
Published on: August 10, 2022
Cite: "A nameless pavilion. Less Pavilion by Pezo von Ellrichshausen" METALOCUS. Accessed
<https://www.metalocus.es/en/news/a-nameless-pavilion-less-pavilion-pezo-von-ellrichshausen> ISSN 1139-6415
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...