Swimming in the sea provides a unique opportunity to observe the world from a different perspective. This crystalline experience allows individuals to feel removed from society and everyday life troubles. The sea can be considered a transitional area, an intermission and passageway linking one place to another. Once immersed within the context of this space, the individuals feels as though they have entered into an alternative universe, feeling weightless and hoping this experience will not end. Is it possible that an island that is so light and almost impalpable that grants the incessant mutability of the sea as well as a contemplative scenario where one can rest after swimming, still provides a state of intimate reflection? Could a transitional territory such as the sea become a static space?
This scenario does in fact exists and can be found while swimming in the sea of Malta. Here we experience a white surface gently floating along the blue water. The structure itself is light and delicate, similar to a cloud, it offers both swimmers and surfers an area to remove themselves from the ocean and enter a peaceful meditative state. Antiroom II is a charming pavilion, designed by Elena Chiavi, Ahmad El Mad and Matteo Goldoni, dedicated to the reinvention of a suspended space between the clouds of the sky and the waves of the Maltese sea.
We would create a space that introduces itself both as an intimate space of contemplation and as a public space – a laical cathedral of the human being.
The work is composed of a series of wooden elements wrapped by graceful white clothes that create a perpetual path of portals, tracing the archaic origins of the architectural sacredness. A single porch that, abandons the architectural role and confines the facades of the ancient palaces, determines the permeability between the boundless sea and the intimate natural water pool, the heart of the pavilion. Antiroom II, in its simplicity, becomes a gentle fulcrum of a sea that, essentially, has no references.
Developed by the active collaboration of students from all over the Europe, during the workshop EASA 2015 Links in La Valletta, the project has become an attraction for many young people to touch the architecture, experiencing the construction site in order to see an idea become reality. Antiroom II thus has become a gathering instant where is possible for people to discuss not only on the technical difficulties of execution of a self-built pavilion and on the problematic linked to a limited budget, but it allows to reflect especially on the enchanting suggestions that architecture can still stimulate.
Unreachable from the coast, Antiroom II is therefore a new architectural island that dialogues with Malta by floating on the sea to give rest to anyone who encounters in its path. A refuge that we greet diving into a deep blue that brings us to the incessant transience and distraction of everyday life.
