le figure mostruose e le figure invisibili | STARTT

The work aims to rehabilitate the monumental halls of the Hotel de Galliffet, looking for the previus restoration, made by Italo Rota in the earlier nineties and adapting the spaces to the uses of the Italian Cultural Institute in Paris. 1. A series of minimal design pieces compose a fantastic landscape, hinting at a monstrous iron figure. As single objects they are free characters living the existing landscape of monumental rooms of the Hôtel de Galliffet, the head become the support for manifestoes an colophons, the body is dissected to make up the bases for the objects to be exposed; the tail is the structure for big elements. Their essential shapes, made by lines an planes, play backlit with the natural light coming from the garden and they multiply themselves in the hall of mirrors of the restoration by Italo Rota. Within their compact form, they combine a furniture for the activities of the Institute: a bench for the expositions, a catering table for a preview, the plan for the presentation of catalogs and publications or – simply – a singular object, made by the variation of the same type element… 2. The conference hall is given back to its monumental form, dismantling the trellis ad redesigning the stage, to contain an hidden retractable machinery for the screen. This solution allows us to give back the direct relationship between the open spaces of the garden and the architectural set of interiors. The mirrors and the opening in the vault, frescoed like a sky, come back to be part of an illusory design framing a natura naturata – painted on the vault and controlled in the garden. The light design is thought to emphasize the sequence of four layers: the one of the pavement, in red and white marble or parquet; the plan of columns, architrave and mirrors, in gold and green; the level of stuccoes at the beginning of the vault, in white and yellow; finally the sky frescoed opening in the vault. A sectional landscape and an exceptional space. The pattern and the monument; Architecture of the City and the reflected architecture, Aldo Rossi and Superstudio: a corpus of concepts and instruments for the project, able to be given back to the toolbox of architecture, finally free to be reinterpreted, used and hybridized with the other tools available, for new challenges and needs of experimentation, in order to save them from the fate of fetishes.

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