Baker Hunt
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Project Narrative
I don’t believe in ghosts, at least not yet. But, I do believe in hauntings. I believe that after a physical presence is removed or altered, our brains are convinced of its continued existence. On visiting the gardens at Baker Hunt, our memories subconsciously absorb and connect the superimposed experiences so that, sometime much later, the sound of wind in the trees might at once recall soft shadows on the ground, the smell of a particular flower, or the slight coolness of a fountain. And who is to say that objects don’t have memory as well? In a small way, the proposed pavilion acknowledges the unavoidable impingement of everything on everything else, as well as the sense of a teeming reality that is perpetuated by the accumulation of these effects. While change often results in the alteration of something that our memory clings to, it does not mean that its effects cease to exist. The siting of the pavilion required both the relocation of a beloved pergola and the reclamation of an edge of the campus that had been ceded as undergrowth. The design, in which a memory of the pergola persists, includes a large trellised roof element that casts dappled daylight around and throughout the new pavilion. The trellis, extending from the body of the building, provides a welcoming gesture, blurs interior and exterior, and creates a place to paint in the shade, sit in the sun, or play an instrument on a special night.