Chapel of Many CoForum, Carinthia

A piece of cultural infrastructure with ArchitekturHaus Kärnten

The structure hosted multiple and diverse events that positively impacted audiences, participants and practitioners. Conceived as a space created from multiple individual components, that can be manipulated by the guests, the structure invites intervention and is designed according to non-hierarchical principles of participation. It has been hugely successful in being adopted by the communities in which it is embedded.

„Traversing the scale between furniture and building, reconciling the hand-constructed artifact, at human scale, with the built environment. This direct line between natural material, hand assemblage and the architectural building, facilitates the direct agency of the individual as a co-curator, not only in the constructed space but also in the object production. This acts as a counter narrative to the dominant, top-down, intellectually distanced, abstracted modes of creation. Essentially, it is the empowerment of the civic community to activate change - ‚E Pluribus Unum‘ (out of many, one), that is the central ethos of the pavilion.

The CoForum and, before this the ‘Chapel of Many’ are projects that specifically engage with reconciliation through the non-discriminatory structure. Whilst remaining playful, the objects/spaces/structures try to maintain an honesty and integrity through the careful preservation of the essence of a simple idea. Ambiguity is used as a way to counter the prevalence of the hyper-specific, the ambiguous object is seen as the catalyst for new forms and relations to emerge.