Forest Ring

Competition
November 2011

FOREST RING is an attempt to reconcile the geometry of architecture with the wildness of nature. The project inscribes a perfect circle within an existing forest clearing, in essence occupying a space that was already there. Clad with mirrored panels, the building itself is nearly invisible, its facade succumbing to the forest around it.

Upon entering the ring, the visitor finds himself in a strange space between forest and building, a clearing of metal grating punctuated by curious geometric planters. The galleries and classrooms can be seen through the metal grate floor in a labyrinthine lower level, reached by a spiral ramp that emphasizes the ring's perimeter. The boundary between indoors and out is easily and frequently transgressed as the visitor moves freely about voids and galleries and thresholds: architecture, mediated by nature, is no longer a container that shelters us from nature but a frame for our journey through it.

Here, we realize the false dichotomy between architecture and nature and learn to consider them as one.