Limes: Limes: Architecture of the ephemeral

This project is called Limes and is the last piece in Edorardo Tresoldi’s series site specific, a series which was created for the 25th anniversary of the building Illa Diagonal, created by the Prizker Prize winner Rafael Moneo in collaboration with Manuel de Solà-Morales. This building, located on the famous Barcelonian road Avunguda Diagona, has won numerous Architectural prizes including the FAD Architecture Award in 1994. After the great success of Aura in the famous Parisian shopping centre Le Bon Marché Rive Gauche, Edoardo Tresoldi was commissioned for a new installation to translate and transport figurative sculptural works to an urban stairwell. This was an unusual task for Tresoldi, who was instead used to designing great stairwells, like that of the Basilica of Siponto. Stretching 58 metres from the ground, on the roof of the building, Limes is composed of 6 transparent blocks, measuring 5.5 metres each, placed in the form of a large sculptural face which looks over the city. For this work, Edorardo Tresoldi used the same materials which brought him fame; that ‘absent material’ which provides a contrast between the massive building and the transparency of the metal mesh.

The faces placed at the summit of the building are oriented in a way to draw the attention to the surrounding landscape: each volume frames a different section of the land to allow for a greater dialogue between the work, the city, and the spectator. Everything moves in the relationship between the human architecture which itself oscillates between subjects and challenges “where the vocabulary of abstraction and representation come together, where the forms are translated, where the faces appear and recede”. The choice of Illa Diagonal as the location of Tresoldi’s work is not a casual one: infact, this decision puts the attention on the contemporary concept of the public space being a meeting place and one for human interactions.

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As with all of Tresoldi’s works, the ‘absent material’ that is the metal mesh, allows the creation of an ephemeral architecture as well as one which changes throughout the course of the day. The mesh, with its neutral tones, allows for the capture of the wide range of colours which appear before us. Through this, sunrise and sunset are filtered creating ever-new volumetric and harmonious illusions. The work will be displaced from the 4th of December 2018 until the 26th of January 2019, and will then be displayed in the inside of the building.

translation by Lara Breckon