The space is permeable. The boundaries of the ambits are physically defined and insurmountable but they are permeable, allowing glimpses and perceptions of what is happening beyond. Permeability provides the opportunity for overwriting. The designed overwriting allows the space to present itself as more or less dense, thus, in the beginning, heterogeneous forms and contents alternate recalling the congestion generated by the overabundance of information in the design approach, and just as in this design phase, only by progressing through the space, the various spheres from time to time become knowable and ordered making the “designed chaos” of the overall vision dissolve.
The environments follow one another fluidly without ever marking a point of beginning and an end. The visitor moves within a space composed essentially of lines of light. It delimits, guides, overwrites, mystifies and clarifies. The transition between one ‘environment and another is always mediated by devices that guide the visitor through the flow without ever creating abrupt transitions.
As one travels through the space, the congestion diminishes, the overwriting becomes writing, the lights rise and establish a quieter relationship with the Basilica, and the spaces become wider until they lose the conformation of flow to take on that of a square. It is the place where Miralles’ design thinking meets Catalan tradition. The two interpenetrate to the point where all division loses meaning so the spaces merge.
The ostensive system also responds to the principle of ‘interactivity however in a gestural way. The particular lighting is entrusted to a lamp stretched between the tracks of the structure. It is the visitor then, should he need more light, who has to take the lamp to “discover” the exhibited object, in the same way as what drawing means for Miralles.
The relationship with the pre-existence is illusory: the installation, which moves arbitrarily within the Basilica Palladiana, establishes a constantly changing relationship with it made of juxtapositions, deviations and reflections. The sometimes more sometimes less dense lighting transforms the pre-existence into a hinted presence, a feeling of enclosure that evokes that moment when one feels that one is about to turn a suggestion into a response.
Heading toward the end even the lights dim. The exhibition ends and leads the visitor back to where it began.
