The ultimate arts festival pick me up

You may not expect to find your inner chi at an arts and design festival but that’s just what Miami-architect Luis Pons hopes might happen in the prefab chapel he has created for Design Miami Basel which runs from November 26 to December 4.

The chapel is part of an exhibition Inventory 02: Soul Does Matter by 11 artists that aims to explore the interplay between the intangible personality of a design object and the material from which it is made. Light, sound and aromatherapy combine in Pons’s chapel to separate the person within from the world outside. The 18x12x9 feet structure is cast from aluminium and 69 elliptical panels of translucent fabric. It can seat four people on an acrylic platform, each of whom is invited to conduct therapy sessions with an energy consultant over the internet.

Luis Pons, Prefab Chapel

Venezuelan-born, Miami-based Luis Pons tells Phaidon: “In the chapel we leave the distraction and chatter of the everyday world behind. Here we are able to embrace and enhance our ability to reconnect to the energy source that is within ourselves and always available in the universe. The chapel, an organic shape like a cocoon is a symbol of life itself. Like a cocoon it is a source of, and protective space for birth, rebirth, renewal and growth.” It's just the kind of mental and physical recharge one needs to go back out and enjoy what is the biggest design and art fair in the USA.

Inventory 02: Soul Does Matter is at 38th to 41st Streets (between NE 2nd Ave & N Miami Ave.