We first came to know about Carla Juaçaba when discovering her Humanidade Pavilion 2012 in Rio de Janeiro. This radical, ephemeral containment scaffolding structure of 90,000 m2 was not a study of form, but a type of abstraction. Referring to Cedric Price, whom she says wanted to create an image of the future, her intention was different because she was dealing with what was possible to do, with a direct connection to reality, stating, “It’s nice to think that you just found a project, not invented one”. She quotes the Mexican poet and Nobel Laureate, Octavio Paz: “The central figure of our new vision of time is NOW”.
When her 2012 pavilion opened to the public, there was a queue of people one kilometre long to access this free building. Her projects build with a clarity of construction, discussing the type of soil below foundations, the construction industry where drawings are sometimes not necessary, in a climate where luscious nature invades in a very short time. Referencing the historical rope-making in the Corderie and using the nautical term Ballast, Juaçaba brings an idea of the weight and mass of concrete, and the tensile property of rope to the Biennale Architettura, presented as concrete totems in the Giardini.
YF+SMcN
Carla Juaçaba
Ballast