PichiAvo builds wooden temple to burn down for Valencia's Fallas festival

Per Ofrenar Fallas temple in Valencia by PichiAvo

Local art studio PichiAvo used wood and paper to create a pavilion based on an Ancient Greek temple, which was set ablaze for the Fallas celebrations in Valencia.

Named Per Ofrenar, which means "to offer" in Catalan, the installation had a classical design that drew upon the Temple of Athena Nike in Athens.

PichiAvo designed Per Ofrenar for Fallas, an annual five-day festival where wood and paper monuments are exhibited in the streets of Valencia before being set on fire on the final day, La Cremà, which was on 19 March.

Installed on a street in the centre of the city, its walls, roof and plinth were constructed from wood, while surplus paper from a book by PichiAvo was used for the capitals and bases of the pavilion's Ionic columns.

Per Ofrenar by PichiAvo — It was made from wood and excess paper from a book by PichiAvo

Inside, two candles were placed atop stacks of PichiAvo's surplus paper, which was arranged to form an altar-like space.

Fallas monuments often have sculptural designs that take the shape of satirical figures, but PichiAvo wanted to design a place for people to gather and leave religious offerings.

"Per Ofrenar means 'to offer', in the sense of making a symbolic, spiritual, or religious offering," PichiAvo founders Juan Antonio Sánchez and Álvaro Hernández told Dezeen.

"We wanted to create a space specifically designed for that act, a place people could physically enter and leave an offering to the deities."

"The temple naturally became the most suitable structure to represent this space within our visual language," the duo continued. "It carries a strong symbolic meaning as a place of gathering, ritual, and connection between humans and the divine."

"As we see it, the temple is not just a form, it's a space for action, for ritual, and in this project, it becomes a place where our visual language and the tradition of offering come together."

Towards the end of the five-day festival, before being set on fire, visitors wrote their wishes and reflections in graffiti on the walls of the temple.

Other wooden pavilions that have recently featured on Dezeen include a pod-like forest structure with openable facades and a collection of timber installations built on the grounds of the 1969 Woodstock festival.

The photography is courtesy of PichiAvo.

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