Current Issue: Domus 1014

Domus 1014

Cover: graphic interpretation of the sketch by Francisco
Mangado for the Congress centre, Palma de Mallorca, Spain. © Francisco Mangado

Editoriale: Della libertà

After our interval for the May issue, let us now get back to our monthly appointment to conclude what we were saying about the construction of a design theory. This time we shall be talking about the last of the phases into which we have divided this work: freedom.

One and one makes three

Michelangelo Pistoletto guides us in the major exhibition that, at the Biennale Arte 2017, presents a summa of his work in the extraordinary setting of the Cinquecento Basilica of San Giorgio. His purpose, as always, is to provoke discussion: on religions, differences and multiplicity.

The obviousness of design

At the Mendrisio Academy of Architecture, the Atelier Aires Mateus has led a rigorous and stimulating teaching programme for many years: students learn to delimit the problem set by the project and, free from preconceived responses, is guided towards the “obviousness” of the solution.

École nationale supérieure d’architecture de Paris-Belleville

Long at the centre of passionate debate, the school of architecture founded in 1969 by Bernard Huet, a disciple of Jean Prouvé, Louis Kahn and Ernesto Nathan Rogers, continues today to work towards openness and international cooperation. Highlighting the cultural, symbolic, practical and political sides of architecture, it has a particular focus too on the architect’s social responsibility.

Melancholia in the Work of Aldo Rossi 

Diogo Seixas Lopes’s study of Aldo Rossi, recently published, reveals the extraordinary capacity and depth of analysis of the Portuguese intellectual and architect, who died prematurely last year. Kenneth Frampton testifies to the importance of this legacy.

The demon of generic creativity 

The new volume by Gabriele Guercio addresses the issue of generic creativity. Letting himself be guided by Picasso, the author establishes a disquieting parallel between the worlds of work and art: just as work deviates into non-work, so art morphs into non-art.

Cityscapes

From vedute by Canaletto to aerial photography by Fedele Azari, the evocative cityscapes and vistas of the Italian peninsula have always been the focus of much artistic attention. Artists’ renditions of them became a staple of the souvenir trade with travellers on the grand tour, and pointed to new ways of portraying the city.

Worksite Naples

The fruit of three years’ study, cataloguing and scholarly analysis by the MADRE museum’s Research Department, Vincenzo Trione’s Atlas traces half a century of the history of that “extraordinary laboratory of contemporaneity” that was and still is Naples and Campania.

Fragments of life

The Israeli designer Gilad talks about his new adventure as the art director of Danese, explaining how, one step at a time, he is starting to build a future on top of the past with the aim of renewing the tight bond between company owner, creative director, designers, craftsmen and suppliers, which is what generated a unique creative research lab 60 years ago.

Mission Île de la Cité, Paris

Again, the French architect Perrault is working on a largescale presidential urban project for Paris. He is conceiving a new identity for the Île de la Cité, whose subterranean belly is one of the key sites of change included in the study.

A way of thinking about Italian cities

Rethinking our cities, starting from beauty, innovation and public space. This was the message embodied in the event “TEDxReggioEmilia”. It revealed what we are no longer able to see, bemused by the multiple alchemies cities are subject to today.

Congress Centre, Palma de Mallorca

An imposing building facing the sea highlights the Spanish architect’s capacity to relate to a large scale site, while devoting great care and intensity to the interiors.

City Hall and Administrative Centre, Deinze, Belgium

By composing two blocks of different heights in a carefully thought-out but not intransigent grid design, this London practice has developed a public building – presented at the design stage in Domus 990, April 2015 – that forges a strong spatial bond with the lives of the Belgian city’s population.

House V.d.K, Slovenia

A country house in Slovenia illustrates the Austrian architects’ expertise in combining tradition and modernity in an intelligent building, where the flexibility of living spaces is matched by advanced bioclimatic interior comfort control.

Spaces of lost steps

For civilised design beyond the object

Constantly shifting the area of application between industrial production, independent production, community design and gallery work, Francesco Faccin believes in design without boundaries or limits. “I am interested in designs that spark connections, thought and debate, above all those that are the product of in-depth studies beyond the object itself,” he says, adding that design is a fantastic opportunity to deepen our relationship with the world around us. 

Yannis Aesopos’s Athens

Elzeviro: “Inhabiting the theatre”

Culture, the arts and knowledge are not just the pillars of people’s and communities’ identities, they are spheres of inclusion, dialectics, sharing and shared experience. You enter a theatre to inhabit life.

Rassegna: Lighting