Pavilion Banquets of the remains

Designed by the students from the Master in Political Arts SPEAP of Sciences Po and the “Place du Vivant” Studio of the École des Arts Décoratifs.

As part of the Villa Medici Festival des Cabanes 2022, students from the Master in Political Arts (SPEAP) at Sciences Po and the “Place du vivant” studio at the École des Arts Décoratifs have designed a performing pavilion as well as a publication gathering interviews they conducted with the architects of the Festival.

This performing pavilion is structured around a large table in the carré des Vestiges, which serves as a collective place and gathering point for the guests and the public. This table is a place, a moment where the collective value of being together is sublimated. We eat here in the morning in the fresh air, we shelter under the trees at lunchtime, and then we join together in the evening for a festive banquet.

Made of recycled materials and prefabricated modules, the table is the fixed element around which objects float and unfold throughout the day. Associated with a shorter and dramaturgical temporality that is the dispersion and the scenic performance of these objects, it fades away in favour of what takes place on and around it. The objects crystallise precise actions such as a platform to speak, a lectern from which to read a text, a bench to sit and listen, a mast and its flag to gather or a taut cloth to protect oneself. This staging of the very construction of a nomadic hut, which evolves between deployment and withdrawal, makes it a performance more than an architecture of refuge: it is a refuge for thought and expression.

With the support of the French Ministry of Culture and the FBI Group.



Image credits:
Preparatory sketches for the “Banquets des vestiges” pavilion © SPEAP / École des Arts Décoratifs.
Detail of a mosaic from a symposium showing an asarotos oikos (unswept floor). Roman art, Eastern Mediterranean, Levant, Private collection. On deposit at the Musée du Château de Boudry, Switzerland.