A Void | Matteo Cainer Architecture

Organized by the magazine INTERNI, with the support of the City of Milan Culture and Museums Association, PIAZZA INTERNI was a major exhibition-event that featured seven commissioned micro-architectures constructed for temporary display. Seven international architects were invited to design habitable spaces that would reflect the present and possible near future.

The project ‘ A Void’ reflects the concept of poché, or interstitial space. The revealing of the poché is achieved by the engaging play of two skins, an interior and exterior, purposely cut at both ends. Here in this usually unseen space, where the structure and lights are placed, the tension of the void is created. Therefore, this temporary micro-architecture participates with the space, and as so, reflects and plays with the surrounding architecture. It is no longer a background, but an active random insertion, where the poché itself becomes a space to be occupied and experienced The installation, a seemingly seductive architectural tunnel, is not a specific and imposing enclosure, but a chance space that is open to interpretation.

Like an “open work,” it is a communications portal, where the form no longer dictates the space; rather, it is the actual space, and the people interacting in it, which embody it. The sense of movement and fluidity that is clearly read in the interior is produced by this natural carving from within, a concept that furthermore tries to underline the communication that this micro-architecture attempts to establish with the surrounding city with the surrounding city.