“Crystal, sphere, surface, rod, ribbon, spiral, cone... [ ] ...all architecture is based [on these] elements [as too are] ...mechanics, installation, chemistry, geography, astronomy, art, ... the whole world.”
— Kurt Schwitters, Merz No. 8 (Hanover, April–July 1924), “Nasci”
Forms stacked and restacked precariously. If sculpture is that which is not the landscape, and architecture is a frame, then here we aim to dissolve the frame into sculpture — which itself is of the landscape. A pavilion of theatre that erases boundaries, a place of sculpture, collage, architecture, and poetry.
SSG’s first work shown at the Merz Barn in 2022, as part of the Speculative Pavilions exhibition, consisted of a 3D model of the proposed pavilion, a digital print, and an animation of the design. In the spirit of Kurt Schwitters, they also created badge-like stickers that were distributed to visitors. Their proposal for a pavilion to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Schwitters’ death was later realised on a monumental scale at Art in the Field at Dongting Lake in 2024.
Fragmented Cave is imagined as a space of care, formed through the continual act of restoring its geometrical fragments. It is a site enriched by the theatre of endlessly shifting light and shadow, as day dissolves into night. The structure is never fixed — continuously reassembled into new arrangements, in a state of continuous incompleteness and perpetual collapse. A design that invites people into interaction, movement, and play.
At its heart stands a fragile, glass-like form within a steel frame, each wall rising 4.5 metres high. Geometric volumes shape both a precarious exterior and an interior of cave-like furniture — organic containers for fragments and collages. Materials might include local wood debris, rock, and slate, alongside speculative contributions from artists and friends across the world. Interiors continuously decay, only to be replaced by other interiors. Fragments are bound with organic meshes or eco-materials, such as insulation fibres. In the spirit of Schwitters’ Merz Barn, this is a cave that will never be complete, and thus always remains contemporary: a total construction. The pavilion is an unstable, interactive site where people can handle, move, and rearrange fragmented, lightweight materials scattered around the space — inserting them into the structure or balancing them on transparent walls. The result is a cave of light and shadow, where the fragments of the world, meshed in ever-changing configurations, may be contemplated as one. Forms are stacked and restacked precariously, a living architecture of incompletion.
“...one finally came to the centre, where there was a seat on which I sat down. I was overcome by a strange sensation of rapture.”
— Rudolf Jahns on the Merzbau
