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OBBA: The oasis

OBBA designed a temporary pavilion, floating in a garden in Yongin-si, Korea, as a shelter that alters the ordinary landscape offering a new kind of repose and contemplation.

Since 2013, AMOREPACIFIC has been running a public art project APMAP (AmorePacific Museum of Art Project). It is a relay exhibition that travels across the different AmorePacific workplaces in South Korea.

Each year, the APMAP brings an exhibition specific to the new location and its context. The APMAP explores an area of blurred boundary between the ordinary life and art, by experimenting with simple exhibitions in the everyday workplaces. Previously, the APMAP was held in the Beauty Campus in Osan in 2013, and in Osulloc of Jeju Island in 2014. This year’s 2015 APMAP is staged at the AmorePacific R&D Center.

OBBA, The oasis, AmorePacific R&D Center 2015

In APMAP 2015, OBBA presents a fluid architecture that crosses the boundary of space. The Oasis floats on the green garden of AmorePacific R&D Center, offering a shelter whose shade draws a blurred border between inside and outside. The interior of the pavilion is expanded towards the sky by opening up is ceiling. On the edge of the top structure are white threads – reminiscing willow leaves – are hung so that they complete a non-structural circular wall.

The Oasis changes its form and experience, responding to the breeze passing through the pavilion. The curtain of threads creates an illusion that one is in the middle of the rain, but soon the wind effortlessly dishevels it. It repeatedly creates opening and closing of the space. The Oasis challenges the normative framework of architecture, while seeking to become a platform that experiments with space. It functions as a pavilion that alters the ordinary landscape into a new kind of repose and contemplation.