ALTERNATIVE SKIES

Vaulting Analysis

2025 Venice Biennale

Location: Venice, Italy

Collaborations: Sigrid Adriaenssens, Romina Canna, Robin Oval

Area: 30m2

Sky 2:
Lazo Timber Vault

Sky 1:
Segmented Tile Vault

Sky 3:
Woven Willow Vault

Alternative Skies Archive

Alternative Skies is a spatial installation that amplifies the connection between natural materials and collective building knowledge. The project reveals a neglected richness of construction techniques in an era of environmental decline, offering a view of the potential for building intelligence that riles on the relationships between natural principles and collective knowledge to construct with sensitivity to both ecological and cultural values.

At the heart of the installation is the roof—the most essential yet complex element in architecture. Alternative Skies presents a 2-by-6-meter vaulted arcade, conceived as a patchwork of roofing techniques elevated on a scaffolding system, the roofs are generated using stone, terracotta, timber, and willow. The arcade is more than a physical structure; it serves as a metaphor for the interplay between nature and design and embodies the ways patterns, forces, and construction details create shelters grounded in the tacit knowledge of crafts..

Through the proposed structures, Alternative skies seeks to explore hidden materiality behind these roofs—particularly heat, air, and water— and aims to redefine the boundaries between design, craftsmanship, and natural elements. Alternative Skies responds to the curatorial prompt of intelligence by showing how natural intelligence in formations, patterns, and forces work together to ground us in the history and culture of making, building, and dwelling.

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