This Roadside Pavilion Houses a Car Sculpture by Pascal Rivet in Rural France

In rural France, Studio Bouroullec and tile manufacturer Mutina build a roadside pavilion for Pascal Rivet’s car sculpture.

Lincoln is a full-size replica of a 1960 Lincoln Continental by contemporary French artist Pascal Rivet, whose work examines the industrial versus the handmade, challenging the gesture of reproduction.

Rivet carved the sculpture out of plywood and eventually paints it in the colors the car was produced at that time.

Teenage acquaintances, Rivet asked Ronan Bouroullec to create a shelter for the work, shown here in a rendering, which was planned for a six-week exhibition at Piacé le Radieux, a Le Corbusier–designed arts center in northwestern France.

So that it could be a perma­nent public-art installation, the center’s director Nicolas Hérisson instead proposed that the pavilion be constructed by local craftsman in a roadside field in the small village of Piacé.

Partnering with Mutina, with which Studio Bouroullec has had a decade-long relationship, Lincoln Pavilion is made of steel and corrugated iron painted the same red as the manufacturer’s Rombini terra-cotta tile paneling the structure’s interior walls, while the floor is the Bouroullec’s Pico ceramic tile; the ladder enables visitors to get a closeup view of the final painted version of Rivet’s Lincoln sculpture.