Crescent House

A device to heighten perception, amplifying the experience of light and landscape.

Project team:
Andrew Burns, Tom Gray, Alan Powell

‘Crescent House’ is the first in an annual series of temporary pavilions to be installed at Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation. Two arcs are set within an apparently simple rectilinear form. The arcs bisect, creating a pair of infinitely sharp points and a threshold to the space beyond. This combination of fragility and robustness seeks to charge encounters in the space with a particular quality. The structure has an ambiguous presence; between architecture and art object. Through framing, it transforms an ordinary rose apple hedge into a landscape of beauty. The pavilion has been permanently installed at Heide Museum of Modern Art.

View from approach.

Frontal presentation to courtyard.

Plan, section and nosing details.

Customarily, the act of framing attributes value. By precisely framing the rose apple hedge, it is imbued with a sense of heightened value, creating a feeling of surprising vastness.

The pavilion frames a Rose Apple hedge.

The dark toned cladding absorbs the colour tones of the adjacent spaces; the green of the hedge and the grey/brown of the gravel courtyard.

The perforated screen at the entry to the pavilion overlays a lighting pattern onto the solid materiality.