EXHIBITION : RECONSTRUCTION OF A MONUMENT II BY WILFRID ALMENDRA

Wilfrid ALMENDRA is born in Cholet (France) in 1972.

With Reconstruction of a Monument II, Wilfrid ALMENDRA confronts the destiny of Constant NIEUWENHUYS’ architectural utopias—including the New Babylon project—and the reality of suburban and industrial areas. Constant NIEUWENHUIS (1920–2005) started to develop his New Babylon project in 1954 in order to give birth to an ideal town, built in height like hanging gardens, as freed from the ground, and devoted to people’s fulfillment.

From that project, only one structure was built in 1955 at the heart of a gaming park in Rotterdam, on the occasion of the exhibition E55 Energy, before having been destroyed shortly after: Monument for Reconstruction was an 16 meters high tower, made of a complex interweavement of wood and metal beams

Wilfrid ALMENDRA’s Reconstruction of a Monument II is a reactivation of this structure. Imitating its shape, it is made of aluminum beams originally parts of verandas found in la Faute-sur-Mer, a French village that was ruined by a wrenching storm in 2010. Although this village was built on a floodplain, it became a thriving residential area for the last decades. Aimed to demolition by French authorities, whole parts of the town have today disappeared. By collecting remains of verandas, archetypal elements of suburban landscapes, Wilfrid ALMENDRA evokes the transition from the time of collective utopias to our contemporary individual utopias, within which each one wants a residence by the sea, even if it means to build it on a floodplain.