Living Claustrum

Concentrico 05, Church of Santa María de Palacio, from 26th of April to 1th of May 2019, Logroño, Spain.

The cloister is where monks can have a space of reflection and connection with God. It is where time and space are suspended. The entire monks’ life turns around this space. Unlike the desert, another space where Biblically speaking divine relationships happened, the cloister is full of symbols. In the cloister, nature, humans and animals gather in a sort of artificial representation of all living beings. It tries to reproduce an earthly paradise at the center of the religious building. The project reflects on the symbolic element of the column. Seven animal-morphic structures complete the collonade that seems it lost a part in the years. They fiercely stand into the courtyard, thus making everyone aware of their presence. They are innocuous, harmless but their size is a warning. They are symbols of a past age or altars of future tribes that look for new forms of recognition. Nowadays, we take for granted too many aspects of the environment in which we live. The work, made of these seven undistinct beings, wants to be a gravestone of what we forgot or the incipit of what we haven’t discovered yet. They are their own symbol.

 

Living Claustrum was part of Concéntrico 05_Logroño’s International Architecture and Design Festival curated by Javier Peña Ibáñez with the support of Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Madrid.