AT THE BEACH – Pavilion Cross-Occupancies 

AT THE BEACH by APSS INSTITUTE has taken over the large pond of the Mies van der Rohe pavilion and have invited visitors to deep dive and discover the secrets of the Adriatic.

The installation is part of the part of Pavilion Cross-Occupancies’ collective exhibition, organized under the New Temporality Programme funded by Creative Europe.

The seashell has been designed by DVARP exclusively for site-specific installation in the large pond of the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion, titled “AT THE BEACH” by the APSS INSTITUTE. The installation is part of the Pavilion Cross-Occupancies’ collective exhibition, organized under the New Temporality Programme funded by Creative Europe.

“AT THE BEACH” showcases data on human influence in the Adriatic that is not typically perceived while gazing at the open sea. Each seashell is titled as and represents one of these interventions/interactions of humans and nature (shipwreck, crashed plane, electricity infrastructure, oil or gas platform, natural reserve, etc.). The seashell also carries a barcode that will take you to our website created for the exhibition: discoveradriatic.me, showing the position and story about the intervention carefully curated by Ana Dobrašinović. The seashells have been 3D printed out of bioplastic and, when placed in the large pond of the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion, the seashells were glowing thanks to the small light battery placed inside (supervised by Luka Bošković).

This research initially started as part of the Master studio at KIT @kitarchitektur led by professor Dijana Vucinic and the APSS spring school workshop in Boka Bay in 2023.

The DVARP & APSS team: Dijana Vučinić, Ana Dobrašinović, Luka Bošković, Snežana Zlatković, Nikolina Đukanović, Milica Kavedžić

Pavilion Cross-Occupancies invites creators from diverse backgrounds worldwide to temporarily transform this unique space to foster a dialogue between its original form and the myriad voices, experiences and perspectives of architects and artists.

This intervention is part of the New Cross-National Temporality Project (NCNTP), which is being held across Europe from June 2022 to May 2025. The NCNTP brings together organisations from seven countries (Albania, Georgia, Germany, Montenegro, Portugal, Ukraine and Spain) and is intended to serve as a platform for the exchange of knowledge and ideas among architects, urbanists, artists, researchers and other interested individuals and organisations from different parts of the world. The project is thematically developed around the notion of ‘temporality’, a massive topic in terms of urbanism and architecture that has gained even more importance against the backdrop of the ongoing public healthcare crisis, which has significantly influenced our understanding of how we use urban spaces.