On a ridgeline next to a rock quarry pond at the campus of Manitoga, the home and studio of the industrial designer Russel Wright, there’s a whirling, biomorphic mass of modular figures—not quite human and not quite animal, but distinctly organic. They’re organized into a rough, habitable dome, holding each other aloft, tiptoe to fingertip. It’s a wide-eyed exploration of the architectural pavilion’s status as a fertile middle ground between sculpture and architecture.
This pavilion, part of Manitoga’s artist residency program, was designed and built by master of architecture students at the University of Pennsylvania and installed early this month. Located in New York’s Hudson Valley, the campus is the legacy of Wright, whose midcentury modernist product designs offered forms that seemed to beg for a caress while still maintaining a sense of geometric discipline.