Text description provided by the architects. Like The Heart Archive, which is hidden in the woods by the sea, the artist hopes that the Heartbeat Museum will also be “hidden.” The site of the building is located on the side of the mountain in the canyon, and the architects sink the entire building into the mountain only through a curved road in the woods can you enter The Heart Pavilion. A road winding from the woods into the Heartbeat Museum, with the sound of synchronized ventricle heartbeats in the woods on both sides of the road.
In late 2018, CLAB was commissioned by the Chongqing·LAB Art Museum to design a collection in Chongqing’s Wulong Fairy Mountain for contemporary artwork by French national treasure artist Christian Boltanski. This piece collects the human heartbeat, and this museum was named ” The Heart Pavilion. ”
There are several key perceptual cognitions that form the undertone of this architectural work: The first is that we want the building to be opened in a way that is auditory, not visual. The second recognition, the flat form of the building, comes from the meditative picture produced by the architect when reading the work “Heartbeat Archive”: the ripples of time and space triggered by the heartbeat. The third realization is that the material of this building will be concrete. The power of concrete sinks, deep into the land, Christian Boltanski expounds on his creative experience: from suffering to death.
The architectural plan comes from a brain hole in the understanding of the artist’s creative ideas: A Square Cut from the Space-Time Ripple of Heart Beating. The final set of circular plane combinations gradually became clear. On the perceptual level, the flat form of the building comes from the imagination of the sound of a heartbeat: “ripples of time and space triggered by a heartbeat”. On a rational level, these overlapping circular rooms distinguish between light and dark partitions according to functional requirements and connect a complete experience streamline that connects end to end.
The installation chamber of the ” The Heart Pavilion ” consists of a strobe incandescent lamp hanging in the center of the room and a wall surrounded by black mirror acrylic panels. Unlike the square ventricles in the Toshima Heartbeat Archive, the circular plane in The Heart Pavilion offers a unique spatial experience: all the black mirrors point to the center of the room. Visitors are in the center of the room, accompanied by the sound of this heartbeat and strobe lights are countless reflections of themselves appearing in the black mirror. These reflections also follow the rhythm of the heartbeat.