Ekklesia

13 July 2015

Ekkiesia

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Pink Intruder was comissioned to develop a burnable urban installation for the Fallas festival.

How were you commissioned?:
The commissioners directly contacted us to develop the project one year in advance

Fallas festival

What was the brief from the client and how much were they involved?:
The brief was to develop an urban installation for Fallas festival. A festivity deeply conected with tradition, and in this context to develop a contemporary image to generate debate between traditional and contemporary.

Fellas Festival

How did your previous experience help you with this project?:
We already had six years experience in building this kind of installation for this Festival. However every year we try to develop the installation with a different material and push this material to its limits. Also our experience as architects helped us a lot.

Fallas festival

Can you explain the layout of the project:
It is an installation made with cardboard tubes with a metallic appearance atop a mosaic made of 96,000 wooden pieces. During the Fallas festival in Valencia, held every year, the ultimate goal for these installations is to be burned to celebrate the arrival of spring. In this context we built a structure entirely of cardboard and wood joints. The purpose was to investigate to what extent we could hold up this type of structure, and also to place in a traditional context a contemporary image to provoke the debate between tradition and modernity. The installation represented a temple where citizens can meet and realize the power they have to change things through debate and confrontation of ideas. Hence the title Ekklesia, an ancient Greek assembly that met once a year between elections to decide if someone was a regular offender they would banish him from the city for ten years. The facility was visitable and columns were screen printed with real political messages with critical messages of citizens, trying to highlight the emptiness of political discourse and the need to provide it with content to generate discussion and be owners of our future. The stage on which the installation was settled was a mosaic of 96,000 pieces based on designs of Nolla Mosaic, a traditional Valencian ceramic that was lost in the middle of 20th century. On the one hand its function was to highlight a lost heritage and to emphasise that any innovation in a traditional context should be based on a thorough knowledge of tradition. At the same time we also wanted it to be a participatory project and therefore the completion of the mosaic was made in different workshops with children at risk of social exclusion and various neighborhood associations.

Fallas Festival

What problems or challenges did you face?:
The timing for construction, we only had one week to build the installation on the street, and it had to be made entirely on the street piece by piece, so we depend a lot on timing and weather. We also made some models to see how material responded, but cardboard is always a surprise, depends on air humidity, on the side of the tube that has direct solar light, etc.. so the response of the material with a structure 12 m high was kind of surprise, it responded as a living being more than as a structure.

Festival

What do you feel were the most unusual design elements of the project?:
There were two. The use of only cardboard to build such a big structure, and also the wooden mosaic of 96.000 pieces made with help of a lot of civil associations and schools for kids in risk of social exclusion.

Festival

How do you think this project is pushing design forward? What makes it special?:
The most important point is the context. The context is a city that celebrates a festival more than 150 years old, deeply related with tradition. So this kind of installation was a 180º turn to what people where expecting. So the main goal that was generating debate was accomplished.

Suppliers Please provide details of product names and suppliers where possible.:
Authors: Miguel Arraiz García / David Moreno Terrón (pinkintruder)
Location: Valencia, Spain
Year: March 2015
Area: 144 sqm
Colaborators: ARAE Patrimonio, Asociacion Cultural Falla Cronista, Retales, Josep Martí, Barret Films, Led Visuals, Ignite, Valencia Vibrant, Choreoscope, Visorifashionart
Photography and video: Noel Arraiz
Client: A.C.F Nou Campanar
Cardboard supplier: ALPESA
Wood supplier: ALPISA

Radical Thinking

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