Designed by: Troy Conrad Therrien, Violette Van Parys and Julio Cavallucci
Design Trust Affiliation: Friend of Design Trust
Description:
Caves, circles, pyramids, temples, basilicas, cathedrals, mosques… the architecture that seems to have always gotten our attention is all about getting their attention. Spirits, gods, God, angels, demons, djinn… whatever you call them, they are The Dead, possibly our dead. The oldest cultures know the necessity of tending to ancestors. Strangers wearing hazmat suits dumping our kin into the ground without family, without funerals, without rites isn’t right. For the 2020 Architectural Association Summer School, Troy Conrad Therrien and Violette Van Parys approached it through the seed of sacred space: the altar. Student, Julio Cavallucci fashioned his out of old magazines and mirrored cardboard. Synthesising modernist form with Mexican syncretism in an altar for a recently rebuilt taxi stand, he later discovered it was calling his name all along. After installing, he found the altar originally displaced by the polished steel architecture of the stand: a spitting image of the one he designed from scratch. Collage with Christmas lights or cosmic telephone?
Image Credit: Troy Conrad Therrien, Violette Van Parys and Julio Cavallucci