CAN A VOID BE MORE PRESENT THAN THE ARCHITECTURE ITSELF?

// THE PRESENCE IN ABSENCE //

PRIX W - MONTMAJOUR ABBEY

Behind every missing piece of a ruin, there is a story — a world of possibilities and lost traces. A ruin is never anticipated in the conception of a space. We do not imagine that a building or a sculpture might one day reach that stage of disappearance. It is either built, or destroyed. And yet, the ruin remains. It becomes a soul suspended between absence and presence, holding on between being and disappearing.

We chose to begin from the absence. The void, silent, open, waiting. It is not empty. It holds the memory of what was, and the promise of what could be. Between a fragmented ruin and a structure yet to come, we shaped a space that can only exist through their interdependence. If one of them is missing, the space disappears. This convergence of space curates the life of the building. An auditorium and a library stage the interactions. An exchange between the students in frpm new structure and the visitors of the ruin.

Here, the void is not what is missing.
It is what allows everything else to exist.

Team: Nawrass Kamour