pihlmann

The Orangery is a temporary pavilion made for The Baroque garden at Gl. Holtegaard Art Gallery in northern Sealand. The pavilion is a reinterpretation of one of the most iconic buildings of the Baroque era: the church of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane in Rome, built in 1646 and designed by the Italian architect Francesco Borromini.

The pavilion enters a formalistic dialogue with the geometry of the garden and links the Baroque idiom to contemporary materials and methods of construction making the new and the old emphasize each other.

With a consistent use of geometric figures – curves, circles, and ovals – Borromini created a dynamic space with a sublime expression back in the 17th century. Around the same time, orangeries became widespread throughout Europe. They were status symbols for wealthy Europeans who built them to house imported citrus fruits which could not grow naturally in the northern and central European climate.

Today, climatic growing conditions are technically simulated in modern greenhouses: technological developments have made the orangery redundant to its original function. This project turns this matter of fact upside down and uses modern technology to recreate the spatial richness of the Baroque orangery

The Orangery in The Baroque garden duplicates the floor plan of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane. Resembling a sketch of the original nave, The Orangery consists of a steel structure wrapped in strong plastic – specifically, a type of shrink wrap which is developed as a protective skin for cars, boats, and other large objects. When heated, the plastic shrinks and takes on new shapes based on conditions one set up.

In the Orangery, the steel structure constitutes the load-bearing structure – and in this case the condition which is set up – for the shape taken by the plastic skin. The pavilion houses a living orangery with citrus plants attached to and hanging from the steel structure at different levels. As a result, the Orangery links the Baroque figure and today’s high-tech world and explores the aesthetic qualities of materials that are in fact developed to implement purely functional needs rather than creating visual value

In 2015, Gl. Holtegaard together with The Danish Arts Foundation’s Committee for Architecture and The Danish Association of Architects made an open call for a competition for a temporary pavilion for the museum’s Baroque garden. The Orangery was chosen as winner among 107 proposals from architects, visual artists, landscape architects, engineers, and designers.