The original design for an artist's house without a given site was reworked by making the internal staircase the starting point for the design of steel sculptures serving as bird observatories. 

 

Unlike the architecture, the sculptural pieces do not follow a specific geometry: elevations do not match with the plans. The sculptures are conceived in terms of parallax and the principle of the spectator's view, while entering the observatories or walking around them. Sculpture will reframe the site as the medium for the works, according to changing weather conditions affecting the topology of a mud landscape.

Reworked design proposal

for a house with studio space,

sketches in scale, 2002.

Anselm Kiefer - Barjac (artist's studio)

Design proposal with photographs of paper models and collage, 2022.

My inspiration for the use of the parallactic view was Richard Serra's sculptural work. Discussing Serra's sculpture, Rosalind Krauss comments that his work opposes "the minimalist conception of space, which positioned both viewer and sculpture like chess figures in a geometrically defined field, one moving around the other:

   'The distinction between Serra's sculpture and that of Minimalism comes in part out of Serra's rejection of the a priori geometries of the grid. For the grid is an abtract tool describing a space which always begins at a point just in front of the person who views it. The diorama of analytic sensibility, the grid, forever leaves the viewer outside looking-in.'" (Buchloh, 2000: 11)


Benjamin Buchloh, "Process Sculpture and Film in the Work of Richard Serra", Hal Foster and Gordon Hughes (eds.), Richard Serra, October Files, Cambridge, MA, London: The MIT Press, 2000, pp. 1-19.

Concept for Bird Observatories

with Staircase, 2021

Reworked from

Concept for an Artist's House, 2002