ot Vital is in the habit of stressing that he
isn’t an architect. ‘I never went to architecture school,’
he told me the last time we met in Bataan, where he’d
just completed a chapel (W*219) that resembled an
Aztec temple but contained a deconstructed rendering
of The Last Supper and a statue of a local harvest deity.
‘That’s why I’m so free to do this.’
‘This’ is now a series of buildings scattered around
the world in absurdly remote locations – though
a more accurate term for his creations might well
be follies. These buildings aren’t meant to be inhabited,
any more than the Bataan chapel is intended for
worship. Instead, they are exercises in fantasy;
expensive experiments in imagination funded by
Vital’s work as a conceptual artist. They are spaces
to wander through; and opportunities to revel in
the sheer escapist joy that surely must seize the Swiss
artist during his creative process.
Vital has coined his own term to describe what
he does: ‘Scarch’. A portmanteau of ‘sculpture’ and
‘architecture’, it reflects his world view that architects,
in recent times especially, have incorporated sculptural
elements into their works. He doesn’t name names, but
it won’t be much of a stretch to imagine Zaha Hadid
and Frank Gehry in the mix. ‘But for sculpture to
reach into the field of architecture, now that’s a rare
reversal,’ he says.
House to Watch Three Volcanoes – a work almost
completed in 2017 that Vital is still tinkering with – is
arguably the most complete expression of his hybrid
practice. As with his Sunset House and Moon House in
Agadez, the Bataan chapel, and another Scarch house
that’s in the works in Ulaanbaatar, it’s a schlep to get
here: the logistics include a flight from Bali to Flores’
main terminus of Labuan Bajo, a connection south to
Ende, and a further two-and-a-half-hour drive from the
airport to the tiny village of Moni along winding roads
through a scenic mountainous countryside swathed
with candlenut and cashew trees, rice fields, volcanic
hot springs and bamboo forests.
The reward for this effort is an astonishing piece
of art that, were it not for its remote location, would
be a major tourist draw.
An arrow-straight stepped path leads up from
the road below, past a traditional Moni house, its
symmetrical proportions wrapped in timber and »N
Not Vital on the balcony of his 13m-high
House to Watch Three Volcanoes. Looking out
onto Kelimutu volcano’s three crater lakes,
it is the latest addition to his so-called ‘Scarch’
creations – part sculpture, part architectureArt