La Fôret

La Fôret
by mecanismo

The project Fôret turned out to be the winner of the international contest that the Concéntrico Festival in collaboration with the Métropole Rouen Normandie organized at the beginnings of 2019 with reason of the biennial organized by the Métropole Rouen Normandie and the NFB, La Forêt Monumentale is conceived as an art biennial focused on the integration of art and forest (due to its great extension in the region) promoting the staging of the surrounding nature.
Inside this context, our proposal was born as an intervention that creates awareness of the actual and radical detachment between nature and the city.
We have got used to the no coexistence between natural and artificial. Nature and urban design confront often separated by unbreakable limits. However, we believe that the city and forest are compatible and share organizational qualities that make them complementary to each other.
Our objective is the integration of the forest in the city. For this, we started from the human, from the 30 laminated pine tree panels and its strict geometry to create a forest by its naturalization and geometric adaptability.
The formal naturalization from the panels and its manipulation to the arboreal gave place to an organic and complex space, based nevertheless in simple geometric rules.
This ecosystem that we are going to implant in front of Saint-Sever church from Rouen, taking advantage of the urban void, has the capacity to atomize and expand throughout the city.
In this way, we create a system that generates an urban forest that the citizens can permeate and walkthrough. A space that, as in nature, results in light, shadows and diversity of spatial situations.
Furthermore, we designed the installation in a way that it could be walked through the inside, to generate in the visitors the sensation that they are going through a forest.
La Forêt has its material origin in 30 laminated pine tree panels of 2500x1220x30 mm that we placed shaping an initial orthogonal grid of 1,4×1,4 m.
By the process of ‘naturalization’, we intervene the panels cutting angles of variable dimensions. Thus, from the original rectangular panels, we obtain different triangle pieces that combining themselves, conform rhomboidal figures that give place to the different trees, with heights taller than 4 m. These trees joined together within the original grid, originate the forest.
There are 5 types of trees ranging in height, formed by eight triangular pieces of 4 different types each.
The pieces from each tree connect themselves by 3 types of metallic pieces inserted in the mechanized edge from the panels, one in the base, other in the centre and the last one in the far end that allows the connection between the different trees.
To generate a greater visual complexity, some of the faces from the trees incorporate mirrors in different shades, recreating the colourful from the forest in autumn.
mecanismo
The whole installation, prefabricated in a workshop, can be built in situ with great simplicity and speed as if it was a tridimensional puzzle. This allows it to be disassembled without leaving a trace and transported to some other place.
Fôret, located in front of Saint-Sever church, in Rouen (France) will be visited and walked by all of the pedestrians from September the 20th 2019.

Credits:
Architects/Design: mecanismo
Organizer: Concéntrico
Wood: Garnica
Methacrylate: Materials World
Metallic pieces: Kuma Estructuras
Ejecution: Kuma Estructuras
Location: Place Saint-Server, Rouen, France.
Date: 2019
Photography: Imagen Subliminal (Miguel de Guzmán + Rocío Romero)