LEVIATHAN: A Single Spine Threading Separate Rooms Into One Sculpture

Most public sculptures ask to be looked at. LEVIATHAN asks to be walked through, sat inside and rained on. It breaks into a sequence of rooms, each with its own material and mood, and then insists, through one dark structural line running from end to end, that all of them belong to the same creature.

LEVIATHAN is the work of Navid Javan Shojamofrad, presented from Sweden, and received Editor's Choice at Sculpt[r] 2020. The project describes itself as "a continuous and integrated architectural sculpture" that draws on "both the symbolic and concrete attributes of the context to create a series of spaces which correspond to a greater whole." That last phrase is the real brief, and the most interesting tension in the scheme.

A Concrete Threshold Cut With Slots of Light

The first image you meet is a wall, and it is a generous one. A heavy concrete face is sliced by tilted vertical slots, and a square archway at its center frames a cyclist riding out toward a distant fountain. The slots do two jobs: they lighten a massive surface, and they throw a barcode of light onto the pavement, so the ground itself announces the opening before you reach it. Up to the right, a timber balcony pokes through a cross-braced void, hinting that this wall is a skin with inhabited depth behind it rather than a flat screen.

Timber Ribs Hung From One Black Beam

Inside the timber pavilions, the organizing device becomes legible. A single dark beam runs overhead along the length of each room, and closely spaced wooden frames drop from it on either side like ribs from a backbone. The name stops being a metaphor here: you are standing in a skeleton. In the gallery-like room, photographs hang on cords between the ribs, and the frames sit low enough that the space reads as a tunnel, compressing the visitor and pushing movement forward along the spine.

Seen from outside in a storm, the same frames become a palisade. Their tops jag against the sky in irregular fins, and figures with umbrellas pass behind the timber as if behind a fence. The repetition that feels protective from within reads as a porous edge from the street, which is exactly the kind of double reading a sculpture in a public space should offer.

A Garden Grown Beneath a Ribcage

The quietest room swaps the tunnel for a vault. Here the timber frames curve and cross into a lattice shell, and the black spine dips down to meet a circular planted bed at the center, with benches ringing it. Small trees and patches of flowers sit directly on the striped timber floor, so the shadows of the ribs fall across grass as well as boards. From the plaza, the shell reads as a low, ridged body with dark plates rising along its back, and people move in and out freely between the ribs rather than through a single door.

A Red Stepped Landscape Under Concrete Fins

The material changes completely in the next room. Massive concrete fins replace the timber ribs, and the floor rises into a red terraced landscape of steps, platforms and seat-height ledges. Nobody is told where to sit: a child runs down the treads, someone plays guitar on a landing, a visitor reads on a lower step. The deep fins slice daylight into bands that stripe the red surfaces, and openings at the sides frame the square outside, keeping the room anchored to its surroundings even as it turns inward.

A Dark Chamber Where Light Arrives in Diagonals

The final room is the most enclosed. Raked walls lean in over a polished floor, and diagonal slits glow with warm light along both sides, the same slot language as the entrance wall now turned into an interior atmosphere. Long benches line the edges, and at the far end a stepped ascent rises toward a narrow opening, giving the procession a clear climax. It is a strong room, and it is also where the question of unity becomes sharpest.

Francisco del Corral, CEO of WaterScales architects in Madrid, who judged the competition, praised the precision of the scheme while questioning how well its parts cohere and whether its architectural ambition comes at the cost of its sculptural presence:

We think it is one of the more developed ideas. It explains precisely each singular element and its use. Otherwise in our opinion is not easy to understand the different elements as a unity. Perhaps it is a project so much “architectonic”, loosing with this decision, the sculptural character in dialogue with the square and their urban elements.Francisco del Corral, CEO, WaterScales architects, Madrid, Spain

The critique is fair. Each room is so fully resolved, with its own material, furniture and lighting logic, that the spine has to work hard to hold them together. Timber, red terraces and dark concrete are three different worlds, and a visitor moving between them may read three pavilions before reading one leviathan.

Why This Project Matters

LEVIATHAN takes a clear position in the old argument between sculpture and architecture: it chooses inhabitation. Instead of an object to circle, it offers a garden, a gallery tunnel, an informal amphitheatre and a performance chamber, each one a reason to stay. That is a valuable provocation for any competition that asks what public art can do beyond being seen.

Its lesson cuts both ways. The continuous spine is a smart, simple device for turning scattered fragments into a narrative, and the repeated slot of light ties entrance to finale. Yet the project also shows how quickly detailed programming can dilute a single sculptural gesture. The most compelling version of LEVIATHAN might be the one that lets the spine speak louder than the rooms hanging from it.

View the Full Project

Project team

Designer: Navid Javan Shojamofrad

Competition and award

Editor's Choice, Sculpt[r] 2020

Jury

Francisco del Corral, CEO, WaterScales architects, Madrid, Spain

Location

Sweden

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