A vibrant new pavilion rises to meet the square’s picturesque trees in Cradle of Country Music Park in Knoxville, Tennessee, connecting the city’s Old Town and its theater district. Made from tens of thousands of individual pieces of painted aluminum, the vivid “Pier 865” provides both a resting place and a vantage point in a reinvigorated public square.
The reptilian sculpture is the work of Marc Fornes / THEVERYMANY, continuing the designer’s interest in high-tech, large-scale installations that involve meticulously assembled elements. Conceived digitally, the structure has a bold, futuristic quality that looks exactly like a 3D model made real—one can imagine its pixel-like pieces puzzling together in a computer program.
The pavilion is painted in greenish gradients in a nod to its surrounding trees. “Its organic shape brings to mind different life forms from different angles: from ground level, the sculpture suggests alien flora growing from the concrete—but viewed from the sky, a tensile, reptilian form reveals itself,” a statement says.
See more work by Fornes on his website and Instagram.
