Meant To Be Lived In (Olafur Eliasson)

Photo: arcspace

Through the obliteration of the dramatic views of the surrounding landscape, Eliasson invites the viewer to a more intimate, solitary sensorial experience within the domestic spaces.

For more than twelve years Galleria Emi Fontana has functioned as an intensely programmed international exhibition space in Milan. From group exhibitions to one-person shows the gallery has consistently sought to present challenging work.

West of Rome, is a series of artist's projects outside the physical location of the gallery. The projects will exist in a variety of venues according to the conditions specified by each of the invited artists.

Olafur Eliasson's work at the Jamie Residence inaugurates the series.

The building is the result of the architect's exploration of the site's implication with the quality of light and people's movements through a domestic environment. As a result, Olafur Eliasson's project plays with the floating volumes of the house.

In the context of the Los Angeles metropolitan area, in which the relation of the individual with the inside and the outside is a predominant aspect of both social and environmental dimensions of daily life, light is often the element that unifies these two physical and existential conditions.

Olafur Eliasson's treatment of the interior interacts with the modernist rationalism of the architecture and, at the same time, contradicts it. Through an experiment of light projections and glass forms, a series of sculptural projects fill up the domestic space with prismatic light reflections.

Photo: arcspace

Photo: arcspace

Photo: arcspace

Photo: arcspace

Photo: arcspace

Photo: arcspace

Eliasson's only reminder of the exterior landscape is a prismatic view through a square cut in the otherwise black box.


Photo: arcspace

With this work, Eliasson confirms himself as a master in the game of perceptual displacements and of architectural and environmental deconstruction: like no one else he is able to give back to the viewer her/his full subjectivity in the sensorial experience of vision.

Escher GuneWardena
Jamie Residence
Pasadena, California
USA

The Jamie Residence revisits the classical tropes of modernist private residences of Southern California: shoe box on pillars.

Designed by Escher GuneWardena the house is located on a steeply sloping hillside overlooking a golf course, the Rose Bowl Stadium and the city beyond. There are also views to the San Gabriel Mountains to the East and the San Rafael Hills to the west.

The wood-framed house sits on two steel beams, spanning eighty-four-feet, that are supported by two large concrete piers. The two piers are the only elements to meet the ground, causing minimal impact to the existing slope and allowing the natural landscaping to continue beneath the house. Access to the house is by a bridge which connects to the road on the uphill side of the property.

Photo: Gene Ogami

The house is divided into two zones: one zone for formal entertaining, the parents' bedroom suite and study, another zone for the kitchen/breakfast area, the family/play room, and the children's rooms.

The house is further divided into more enclosed spaces for bedrooms, facing the hillside, and very open spaces for communal activities, facing the view.

Photo: Gene Ogami

Photo: Gene Ogami

Drawing courtesy Escher GuneWardena

These open spaces, which include the living, dining, outdoor deck, kitchen, and family rooms are all interconnected, to create one continuous 84 foot long space with 180 degree views of the cityscape below and landscape beyond.