With their multifaceted approach
to architecture, RIBA Silver Medal
winner SONIA MAGDZIARZ and
London-based EGMONTAS GERAS- together APASTOREALITY –
make an interesting addition
to ‘The Challenge’.
tions. We asked ourselves how we could
reconsider these sites as operable, inhabit-
able and explorable.Do you have a specific desert in mind?
SM: The particular location doesn’t mat-
ter so much, as long as it’s a desert that
resonates as an expanding forgotten space.
Qualities like colour and transparency
would depend on the site. And traces of
skin and textures of extinct species would
be engraved onto the surface of the clouds:
a repository of fauna now lost to the pres-
sures of the site.Are your desert clouds a comment on
the current state of travel and tourism?
EG: We were hesitant about the ‘luxury’
part of an experience. Luxury is too often
attributed to monetary value, and to things
that are inaccessible to the majority of the
population. We thought of luxury in terms
of something magical: an architectural
conjuring that monumentalizes a site in
a sensitive way.
SM: We’ve been pondering this idea
with architectural goggles on. How can
travel and tourism not conflict with nature?
There are numerous examples of tourism
leaving a trail of destruction behind. It can
suffocate and drain the environment. We
feel it’s imperative to consider how we can
touch the world delicately.
EG: Yes, we’d like our architecture
to shuffle around in slippers. Perhaps it can
shift in rhythm with the earth, dislocating
and relocating itself to eschew permanence.
It would be great if architecture could learn
to contribute to an experience instead of to
simply facilitate it. It’s important that any
architectural gesture not only speaks to
the place, but also listens to it. If a site says
‘I’ve had enough’, then maybe it’s okay for
architecture to point travellers in a slightly
different direction. – TI
apastoreality.comdrastic temperature fluctuations. Our
clouds would conserve heat during the day
to create a cocoon of warmth at night. The
resulting microclimate would also become
a new home for plant life.Why did you decide to focus on deserts?
SM: We thought it would be interesting to
inhabit an otherwise barren environment.
The desert seems to be a frontier that’s
more synonymous with life-opposing condi-Can you tell us about Clouds of Glass
in the Desert? EGMONTAS GERAS:
We’re proposing an architectural form
that touches the earth lightly, made from
resources found on site. Visitors stay over-
night in cloudlike glass structures cast in
situ from the desert’s only resource: sand.
SONIA MAGDZIARZ: Why do
deserts need clouds at all? Clouds that form
during the day escape to cooler areas by
night, accounting for the sandy landscape’s
The Clouds of Glass in the Desert
conserve heat during the day to
create a cocoon of warmth at night.THE CHALLENGE 4141