Jury Award
Pavarotti Concert
Location
Laguna Salad, Mexicali, Mexico
Design Firm
Doron Gazit, Van Nuys, CA
Design Team
Doron Gazit (Principal in Charge), Liz Lang, Raul Valenzuela
Fabrication
Guillermo Martinez de Castro
Client
Patronato Centenario Di Mexicali
Consultants
Guillermo Martinez de Castro
Photographer
Doron Gazit
The project was to design the look of a three square mile Pavarotti concert venue in a remote dry lakebed. The intent was to create a sense of place in a borderless flat desert; create a festive, artful, and consistent look for unimpressive structures in a monotonic setting; complement the desert and highlight the concert without attempting to overshadow them; and provide the 50,000 visitors with a sense of arrival – day or night – while facilitating their orientation. The project was commissioned only three weeks before the event, so all planning was tentative due to production constraints: there were six days for setup, and limited budget and personnel.
Long tubes inflated by fans, flexible and adaptable, were woven through scaffolding to create 17 sculptural towers – each unique – providing a kinetic experience upon progression. The color white was chosen for an elegant look, to complement the mellow tones of the environment. Clear tubes were used on-stage as projection screens. On a more personal scale, a white tunnel marked the entrance to the VIP venue.
Each tower required minimal power, the plastic materials were rolled up for re-use, and scaffolds reverted to their original use, leaving the desert as barren as it was before the event.
Jury Comment
"I chose to champion this project because of the designer's resourcefulness and creativity when faced with the challenge of creating a distinctive, festive signal for a one-night event featuring the opera singer Pavarotti. The low-tech approach using long inflatable tubes woven through the towers and used onstage as well as the entrance to the venue was smart and quirky. More importantly, considering the time constraints and the flat and unimpressive landscape, this solution won me over for its ingenuity and humility."