Ascarya Pavilion

The Earth is in a chaotic and confusing state right now, with the future of our soci-ety not entirely clear. But in a world of COVID-19 and climate change, now is the time to reflect on the posi-tive aspects of humanity and its many great achievements.

Tasked with designing a structure encapsulating the best and brightest of our species in a way that, should we ever be visited by other life forms, would allow them to learn about our achieve-ments in a single space.

The Great Blue hole was se-lected to pay homage to the allure and power of nature. When creating a structure that celebrates the achieve-ments of humanity, it seems fitting to encapsulate this in a site that is itself a clear re-minder of our dependance on and duty to the natural world.

A site of astounding natural beauty, but it is an ephemeral feature destined to exist for the mere blink of an eye in the history of our planet ; small amounts of sand seep into the cave on a daily and will even-tually cause it to disappear.

In a pavilion where the goal is to showcase man’s great-est achievements, the struc-ture should embody the underlying drive and inspi-ration required to accom-plish mannkind’s success.

The pavilion of humanity takes cues from its ocean location and an octupus’ Form, As these symbolize the power of endurance, creativity, unpre-dictability and intelligence. The pavilion will be made up of three materials, concrete, bamboo and recycled plastic. A play between hard industri-al materials and soft natural materials. Incorporating a ma-terial that also has a meta-phoric meaning, placing a mate-rial that would in many cases harm the ocean but trans-forming that into usefulness.