Extra 4 (2016)

XXI Triennale International Exhibition Milan 2016

Concept and Direction Pierluigi Nicolin - Curated by Nina Bassoli

Edited by Nina Bassoli and Gaia Piccarolo

Amateur Architecture Studio, Atelier Bow-Wow, João Luís Carrilho da Graça, El Equipo de Mazzanti, Maria Giuseppina Grasso Cannizzo, Lacaton & Vassal, Josep Llinás Carmona, Michel Desvigne, Catherine Mosbach, nArchitects, Rural Urban Framework, Rural Studio, Studio Albori, Studio Mumbai.

 

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The idea of the exhibition is to create a spatial device that is able to encourage visitors to look at architecture from a different perspective, relying on the persuasive effect of the atmosphere of a museological institution like the Pirelli HangarBicocca, which is not devoted to architecture. On display in the spaces are “actual” samples of architecture, in an attempt to facilitate the discovery of their distinctive artistic character by inviting visitors to go beyond the usual, merely practical way in which it is perceived. The samples of reality created for the Triennale, exercises of poetic architectural language, refer to good practices of design within a particular field of expertise. The exhibition has taken shape through the formulation of a number of questions on decisive situations and problems for the architecture of our time and the architects invited to contribute have been asked to respond with proposals in which the grammar and syntax certify the truth of a vision, so that the solutions are treated like the examples we find in dictionaries. The result has been the discovery of an architectural equivalent of these questions that produces, if not exactly the kind of “pattern language” theorized by Christopher Alexander, at least demonstrations with regard to the truth of some key words like Porch, Entrance, Rehabilitation, Roof, Shelter, Pavilion, etc.: figures to be used as picks for unlocking the expression of architectural ideas about new paradigms like the ecological one, or the notion that architecture ought to be merging with the discipline of landscape design.