DAVID TELERMAN, AN ARCHITECT FROM PARIS, COMPLETES THIS MYSTERIOUS PIECE OF ARCHITECTURE IN THE ARIZONA DESERT
TEXT: PRATARN TEERATADA
PHOTO: IWAN BAAN
(For Thai, press here)
On the vast empty land of the Arizona desert emerges a mysterious piece of architecture. Its presence feels like some sort of symbol; an attempt to communicate with visitors from the sky, a universe far away.
The project is called McNeal 020. It is David Telerman’s first constructed project, an architect from Paris with a passion in the beauty and expansive desolation of the deserts located on the Southwest of America.
The work bears some resemblances to a Ziggurat, a type of massive structure that was built in ancient Mesopotamia. With the shape similar to a hill, Ziggurats often have the form of a stepped structure with receding stories and levels, along with staircases leading up to gates or entrances. Apart from their role as the venues where religious ceremonies were held, ziggurats were the backdrop of wars, hunts, rise of heroes, sports and civilization.
This particular architecture by Telerman, however, looks somewhat like an inverted ziggurat. While being inside at different levels of the interiors, the structure invites viewers to explore the beauty of the desert’s vastness, particularly the varying effects of light that shine into the space at different times of day. The inverted pyramid shape has a rectangular mass that covers the middle of its top with four uneven lines projecting from each corner and out into the desert.
The architect intends for the design to be a stark contrast of the surrounding landscape. The refined clean form and lines of the exposed concrete structure provides a similar aesthetic and feel as a piece of land art. Standing at the center of the rectangular mass and looking down, one may start to feel as if the foundation of the entire structure was on the brink of collapse, as if we could be swallowed by the ground down below us at any second. One of the most interesting features about the structure is how sci-fi it looks, especially from the distance and perspective of a UFO’s view.
