The Harmony of Form and Function

Back

Spazio 31
18th-22nd April, 2023 

Interior Concept from Shigeru Ban

To best accentuate the beauty of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin Lamp, I thought it would be ideal to use the lamp in a space with shadow, a sense of texture and materiality, rather than in a museum-like white box. When Wright designed the Taliesin Lamp, he must have envisioned its use in such a space.
The simple paper tube tunnel proposed here, runs through the exhibition space from the entrance to the end of the room. By using the same paper tube material from the bottom all the way up to the ceiling, the tunnel becomes an immersive space, allowing visitors to experience Taliesin’s soft quality of light and its texture of wood without being disturbed. The paper tube tunnel is reminiscent of the glass tube corridor in the Johnson Wax Building, one of Wright’s masterpieces. A similar tunnel-like space can also be seen in the entrance area of the V. C. Morris Gift Shop, a late work of Wright’s that is also considered as a prototype for the Guggenheim Museum. Here, he used long, thin bricks, whose coloration resembles that of paper tubes. By using recyclable materials such as paper tubes, I believe that Frank Lloyd Wright’s philosophy is effectively expressed for this temporary exhibition, without wasting building materials.