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Architects: Rizoma Arquitetura
Text description provided by the architects. The Gallery Lygia Pape was designed after a demand from the curatorial team at Inhotim to have a building for one specific installation by Brazilian artist Lygia Pape, Ttéia. The dimensions of the gallery were pre-established by the installation: a cube of 21x21x6m. The building should also be closed and dark, as Ttéia is a light piece. The site was relatively small if compared to the size of the requested building. It was a plateau in the slope of a hill, approached by a narrow ascending road in a forest.
The site plan was almost naturally defined by the size and configuration of the plateau. The visitor arrives at the plateau very close to a 6-meter-high blind wall, the encounter happens in an abrupt way.
In an attempt to minimize the impact of this encounter, the top slab of the cube was decreased and rotated in relation to the bottom, keeping the size of the footprint of the building. This strategy created a triangulation of the walls and gave the façade some depth, pushing it a little off from the visitor.
The other important aspect considered for the project was that the installation to be put inside the gallery is a work with no directionality that invites the visitor to circulate around it, gradually revealing itself. The building should then have the same character of little dimensionality, something that was achieved through the rotation of the top of the cube.
Inside, the triangulation of the façade can also be perceived at the circulation that takes the visitor to the installation and causes some disorientation. The circulation is dark and tortuous and extracts the visitor from the “outside world”, taking him to a place of introspection, reflection and spirituality, created by Ttéia.
