Hungarian Pavilion - Gomboc, the Immateriality of Nature

‘There are two ways of walking through a wood. The first is to try one of several routes […] the second is to walk so as to discover what the wood is like and find out why some paths are accessible and others are not.’ Umberto Eco – Six Walks in the Fictional Woods. The discovery of the inaccessible path mentionned by Umberto Eco has led to the idea of Hungarian pavilion, mixing with the  hungarian invention named GÖMBÖC . Gömböc, as a hungarian invention, is the central element of the exhibition and refers to a two-meter high solid plexiglass moving object. ‘Gömböc’(pronounced as ‘goemboets‘) is the first known homogenous object with one stable and one unstable equilibrium point, thus with two equilibria altogether on a horizontal surface.

The pavilion as wood is intended to represent the inacessible path, and since it is of immaterial nature, architect Tamás Lévai is trying to evoke it with non materials : empty space, lights and sounds.

1 - Empty space // GÖMBÖC, as a distinguished pebble analogy, helps to understand empty space and to recognize its uniqueness and greatness. In order to represent it in architecture, we had to combine features that are used by both mathematics and architecture: homogeneity, abstraction, dynamics and playfulness. The buffer space behaves as a wood opening, being created from a three dimensional matrix of vertically moving wooden sound tubes. The phenomenon as a whole can only be seen in our mind, mainly as a play of light and shadows while moving in space.

2 - Natural Lights // the sunshine is reflected on the light, glossy floor and illuminates the entire structure from beneath. Outdoor sould be a pipe structure, functioning as a ‘curtain’, in which water is circulated with air bells.

3 - Artificial Lights // light sources are built into the wooden sound tubes as stars in the sky.

4 - Sounds // the wooden installation in itself is like a musical instrument, tubes are sound-boxes.

Afterlife of the architectural installation

The appearing elements in the exhibition space constitute a harmonic unity in them, embodying the phenomenon that is created through the structure, it raises the opportunity of open-air exhibition with the moving light-sound-space, as a synthesis of nature.