Pavilion ProtoCAMPO

Designed by WALD agency

The ProtoCAMPO pavilion is an outdoor architecture consisting of a wooden structure (agora) on which an inflatable dome (cupola) rests. ProtoCAMPO takes these two archetypes of the Roman city to create a place of welcome, event, mediation and meditation at the occasion of the Villa Medici Festival des Cabanes 2022.

ProtoCAMPO was co-designed and built with the Haroun Tazieff high school in Saint-Paul-lès-Dax (France), the teachers and 44 high school students, as well as with the support of partner companies as part of the Résidence Pro educational programme developed in 2021-2022 by Villa Medici with the Nouvelle-Aquitaine Region. This unique high school mobility programme – whose objective is to promote the professions in the vocational sectors – made it possible to welcome the 300 high school students participating in the programme to the ProtoCAMPO from 9 to 12 May 2022.

ProtoCAMPO is the third manifesto building by Frédérique Barchelard and Flavien Menu, former Fellows of Villa Medici (2019-2020). The first is the Proto-Habitat developed and built during their stay in Rome (2020), the second the SOLARproto (2021) is a 300 m² exhibition space built in Amsterdam, and the last the ProtoCAMPO in Rome (2022). ProtoCAMPO is an outdoor architecture to meet the audience, conceived as a machine to think, exchange dialogue and imagine new ways of living.

Construction materials: wooden agora structure (maritime pine) topped by an inflatable dome (canvas).

Year of conception: 2021-2022

Dimensions: 17 x 17 x 9 metres, 300 m²

Key figures:

Weight of the wooden structure: 12 tons
Weight of the inflatable dome: 300 kg
Installation time of the wooden structure: 5 days
Dome inflation time: 40 minutes
Pre-assembly done by the students of the carpentry and joinery classes of the Haroun Tazieff High School in St-Paul-lès-Dax

In partnership with: LYCÉE HAROUN TAZIEFF, DITEC, SERGE FERRARI, BOLLINGER+GROHMANN, ROTHOBLASS, PEINTURESUNIKALO, JAKOB, JEUDI WANG, SCIERIE LESBATS, GROUPE THEBAULT, SETIN, DL AQUITAINE, SERGE GOACOLOU – BOIS CONSEIL

About WALD

Frédérique Barchelard and Flavien Menu created WALD during their year of residency as Fellows at Villa Medici in 2019-2020, during which they created Proto-Habitat, a pavilion demonstrating the expertise of excellence in the wood sector, accompanied by a travelling exhibition. WALD endeavours to work with the seminal values of this first project: wood and ecological construction, happy and shared frugality, promotion of expertise, ease of assembly and disassembly of the structures. WALD has created the SOLARproto (Amsterdam) and the ProtoCAMPO (Rome) and works on highly sustainable projects in France and Europe that combine architecture, project management, artistic collaboration and public outreach.

More information at www.wald.city

With the support of: