BY ZACH MORTICE
The completed Manitoga pavilion. Photo by Vivian Linares.
On a ridgeline next to a rock quarry pond at the campus of Manitoga, the home and studio of the industrial designer Russel Wright, there?s a whirling, biomorphic mass of modular figures?not quite human and not quite animal, but distinctly organic. They?re organized into a rough, habitable dome, holding each other aloft, tiptoe to fingertip. It?s a wide-eyed exploration of the architectural pavilion?s status as a fertile middle ground between sculpture and architecture.
This pavilion, part of Manitoga?s artist residency program, was designed and built by master of architecture students at the University of Pennsylvania and installed early this month. Located in New York?s Hudson Valley, the campus is the legacy of Wright, whose midcentury modernist product designs offered forms that seemed to beg for a caress while still maintaining a sense of geometric discipline. Students installing the pavilion at Manitoga. Photo by Vivian Linares.
The pavilion?s organic and modular growth seems self-organizing, like the forest that surrounds it. Its modules look from afar like an ancient accumulation of driftwood stitched together with shamanistic magic. But focus in, and near-human figures snap into shape?a torso, four limbs. There?s a sense of floating, effervescent whimsy in the grand tradition of the pavilion folly. Mohamad Al Khayer, an instructor at Penn who led students in fabricating and installing the pavi...