Chain Reactor

Architectonic installation for the 3rd Biennale of Montreal, Canada, 2002.

6 x6 x 6 metres cubic steel frame supporting walls of steel chain in the heart of the Montreal information technology area in the Old City.


Inside the structure is a qhite gravel floor in the middle of which 4 benches and a fireplace out of stone.


People enter to gather around the fire and return to their offices with the smell of smoke in their clothes.

Casagrande & Rintala

Redrum

Rerdum! Redrum! Drawing Marco Casagrande.

We were invited to Anchorage in February 2003 by Alaska Design Forum and decided to drive there by car. We shipped a Land Rover Defender from Helsinki to Halifax Nova Scotia in the Atlantic coast of Canada and drove it to Anchorage across the frozen North America. The Alaska Highway is surrounded by broken trucks, oil tanks and occasional moose. the closer to Alaska you get the more oil related junk there is in the nature.

Inspired by this and the Alaskan oil industry in general we decided to build a temple for oil in the middle of Anchorage. The material is recycled Alaska Railroad oil tanks cut to sections and set standing to frame away the city and open to sky. The floor is out of 7.000 pounds of oyster shells, the origin of oil. The brutal structure is painted bright red inside and has a fireplace in the end.

There was a vote in the local TV: "Is this a piece of fine art of a slap against the face of Alaska?" Fine arts lost. People were complaining that the temple smelled like oil.


Casagrande & Rintala 2003
Alaska Design Form
Anchorage Alaska
Link

Architizer
Wikipedia

Land(e)scape

Architectonic landscape installation realized in Savonlinna, Finland, 1999

Three abandoned barnhouses mounted on wooden shanks in the hight of 10 meters in order to give them a slow, majestic walk.

Desolate, longing after their farmers, the barns have cut their primeval union with the soil and are now swaying towards the cities of the south.

The story ended on a dark night of October when the barns were set on fire by the coreography of dancer Reijo Kela during a traditional slaughtrer carnival. The work was commenting the desertation process of Finnish countryside.

- See the video

Architectural Review 12/99, Emerging Architecture Award
La Biennale di Venezia 7. Mostra Internazionale di Architettura