building, so it would be full of red stains. I thought of
calling it Spitting House, as a pun!’
That never happened, but the prototype – a piece
of white canvas enthusiastically splattered with the
crimson efforts of the village women – now sits inside
the house. It’s the sole decorative piece, looking for
all the world like something Jackson Pollock might
have done if he’d one day run out of every paint colour
except red.
Vital shrugs as he recounts the story. Although
he’s in the midst of additional landscaping and installing
a lap pool in a terrace below House to Watch Three
Volcanoes, his restless mind is elsewhere. He’s currently
building another Scarch project, this time in aluminium
and which he hopes to show at next year’s Venice
Biennale, inside the San Giorgio Maggiore church.
After that, it will be shipped to Tonga and installed on
an island Vital bought there. Also in the works is a
monograph of his Scarch projects, co-published by
Hauser & Wirth and Scheidegger & Spiess, its release
to coincide with a retrospective exhibition in January
in Somerset.
‘Why do I keep building these buildings?’ Vital says.
‘I don’t know. It all started in Africa where the sunsets
are so short and intense and I wanted to build something
to watch them from. And then I kept going. It’s the
kind of thing an architect would never do.’ ∂
notvital.comAbove, a drawbridge-style door
opens up the interior, also
accessed through a small door
off the balcony and a descent
via a second, internal, stairway
Left, Vital’s timber, thatched
Moni house, nearby, which he
uses when he visits∑
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