Burle Marx Redux — WIP
Regarded with presentist eyes, Roberto Burle Marx’s exuberant rooftop garden graphics can be read as part of our post-digital milieu. Thick Photoshop-esque brush-strokes blur boundaries between figure / ground, path / niche, plant / form. Can this plastic figural ground graphic set up new conditions for architecture?
What follows is an exploration for a small pavilion of public infrastructure — a porous poche of sorts, where figure-ground relationship can be blurred depending on whether the box is open or closed.
Red T = washbasin + outdoor shower
Red circle = public lounge
Red square = barbeque plinth + seating
Blue box = night-light
Blue curved planes = up/down sliding door panels
Image credit: Roberto Burle Marx, design for the minister’s rooftop garden, Ministry of Education and Health, Rio de Janeiro, 1938. Gouache on paper. Image has been cropped.
(To be continued)