Stairway to heaven

Stairway to heaven, a public space for individual use. Building in process.
Architect: Didier Fiuza Faustino / BUREAU DES MESARCHITECTURES
Creative team: Didier Fiuza Faustino, Pascal Mazoyer.
Collaborators: Nicolas Hugoo, Xaver Marschalek, Philippe Smith.
Construction: Lovarte Lda
Client: Ministério da Cultura
Three levels concrete staircase, leading to a 4m2 metal-latticed platform with a basketball. Located on Praça dos Arômas, Castelo Branco, Portugal.This project is an interrogative as much as asservative answer to the implicit request made by the municipality for a piece of urban art. Given the unacknowledged rejection of the big housing programme nearby, Stairway to heaven (re)calls (for) that close presence by reprising the motif of the stairway, a place of encounter and safety. Refusing to act as a totemic sculpture that transforms the site into a place of individual submision (to artistic prestes, to political demands), the project invites each person to appropriate it and gives them the chance to momentarily dominate the territory on their own. Like in act of communion, a sharing in isolation. Winner of the price for public contemporary art “Prémio da Tabaqueira 2001“, Portugal.