A multi-disciplinary team of artists, engineers and architecturally-trained designers are behind a new pavilion in Sydney called Interchange. Studio Chris Fox, which also created the incredible sculpture Interloop made out of the old wooden escalators at Wynyard Station, designed, modelled and managed the project, which covers 350 square metres.
Three fluid forms seem to twist into the sky meeting delicately in the centre. The external structure is white, made of glass-reinforced concrete (GRC), while the internal structure is formed from Australian Blackbutt hardwood and aluminium inner rails, with the lower parts curving into seating for the public.
The finishes were laid on an aluminium substructure, while the ground is made of concrete and a series of stainless steel rails that snake through the space, converging and separating like the original railways lines that used to run along the ground here in Sydney’s Eveleigh.
“The project really started with a concept around the switch, the rail switch, being a potentiality of moving from one track to another,” explains Chris Fox. “It’s about an interchanging between paths.”
The structure is as complex as many architecturally-designed buildings, using 15 tonnes of robotically-moulded glass reinforced concrete, 1400 pieces of router cut hardwood and 250 metres of stainless steel ground rails.
“I think there’s an entire area of research which is challenging notions of architecture versus art, and connections to programmatic or functional requirements versus the folly or the notion of the project really solely being about an idea or transmission of ideas,” says Fox.
More on Studio Chris Fox
