Misunderstandings

The encounter between Campo and Le FRAC Centre-Val de Loire of Orleans produced “Misunderstandings”, a project which, addressing one of the most important archives of architectural experiments worldwide, opens a reflection on the operative value of museums and collections for the contemporary discourse and practice of architecture.

Approaching Le FRAC Centre-Val de Loire’s collection less with the cultural diligence of the curator than the amateur curiosity of the architect, CAMPO discards the traditional monographic, typological or historical readings, to adopt a looser and unconventional framework that pairs human emotions and architectural principles. Fear/Structure, Hope/System, Nostalgia/Form and Surprise/Limit are the four binocular lenses through which we looked at the collection as a living material that can be studied but also manipulated to reflect on the contemporary condition. 

Campo selected from the archive twelve couples of visual documents – drawings, images or models photographs – three for each dialectical theme, to give them stripped by any information regarding the original project, to twelve architects as brief. The invited contributors have been asked to respond to the diptych through the project of a book in which freely collect and organize the reflections and speculations provoked by the images.

Suspended from their material context and subtracted to the precision of history the images acquire a new life, becoming projective instruments in the hands of the invited contributors. Juxtaposing and displacing elements of the collection in a new framework that disrupts their conceptual and historical meaning, allows for misunderstandings, temporary mistakes and purposeful inaccuracies that liberate unpredictable narratives from the sheer visual power of the works.

25 November 2016 – 13 January 2017
Misunderstandings
Campo
via della Marrana 94, Rome