1996

Installation: Kolonihaven

Copenhagen, Danemark

“Kolonihaven” is an installation designed by Gaëlle Lauriot-Prévost with Dominique Perrault to celebrate Copenhagen as the European Capital of Culture in 1996.

In 1994, editor and curator Kirsten Kiser and architect Christian Lund launched an invitation to reinterpret the “Kolonihavehus”, small parcels of land where people from the countryside who moved to the city in Denmark at the end of the 19th century could temporarily build a pavilion and cultivate a garden or a vegetable patch. These parcels became a Danish symbol in itself.

The long-term project was to create a Danish-themed architectural park. The following international architecture firms were invited: Mario Botta, Ralph Erskine, Frank Gehry, Michael Graves, Heikkinen & Komonen, Arata Isozaki, Josef Paul Kleihues, Leon Krier, Henning Larsen, Richard Meier, Enric Miralles & Benedetta Tagliabue, Dominique Perrault and Gaëlle Lauriot-Prévost, Richard Rogers, Aldo Rossi, Alvaro Siza and Søren Robert Lund.

Each firm had 6 m2 to imagine their project.

Six installations were built, including one from Dominique Perrault and Gaëlle Lauriot-Prévost. The architects created a transparent house in the shape of a glass enclosure surrounding a tree, a way to claim this place, of creating a nature “of one’s own”.

The drawings and models of this work, as well of the other contributions, were presented in the exhibition “Kolonihaven – The International Challenge”. It was featured in the Arken Museum of Modern Art in Denmark in 1996, then in the Arkitekturmuseet in Stockholm in Sweden in 1998 and finally in the Reykjavik Art Museum in Iceland in 2000.

In 1999, the Louisiana Museum acquired the drawings, models and installations. The latter are found in its garden ever since.