Using the architect’s drawing board as the symbolic starting point for a series of exhibitions dedicated to architecture – which started with a retrospective about Mario Cucinella this spring – the Museo Novecento in Florence presents, until September 6th, “Paradigma. The Architect’s Drawing Board Gianluca Peluffo”, a rich overview about three projects realised, or currently under realisation, by the Italian studio in Egypt.

Curated by Laura Andreini, in this second chapter, the exhibition unfolds through photographs by Ernesta Caviola, an installation by artist Adriano Bocca and a series of drawings and models, among which is a large terracotta miniature created by ceramist Danilo Trogu and representing the mosque of Sokhna, a small town on the western shore of the Red Sea's Gulf of Suez. The mosque - which is still under construction - was designed with a clear emphasis on colours and light: Topped by skylights of different sizes in preset cement closed with polychrome glass, the structure is also enriched with a traditional pierced claustra.

“Paradigma. The Architect’s Drawing Board Gianluca Peluffo” also presents a series of documents illustrating the project “Il Monte Galala”, a new city under development since 2015 close to Sokhna. Awarded with the Dubai Cityscape Award 2016 as the best masterplan for the Middle-Eastern area, “Il Monte Galala” shall spread on a surface of approximately 2.200.000 m2. Lying on the hilly landscape of a semi-deserted area along the coast, the project will feature a marina, a residential area, as well as hotels. “The importance of the intervention, additionally apart from its size, lies in the positioning of the new city within the system of administrative, industrial and infrastructural development that Egypt has started this past year; it is in fact in anticipation of the New Capital at half distance in the stretch between Cairo and the Red Sea”, explain the architects.

As Gianluca Peluffo affirms, “the three projects want to express in their own realization and representation and at different scales in the urban, architectural and monumental field, the planning method of an Italian studio, that on the base of a solid consciousness of the cultural memberships, is able to place itself as a creative counterpart in the definition of a ‘genealogical Stra-Linguaggio’. This last one is invented within special social and local conditions, but it is still inside the so-called ‘Duty of Contemporaneousness’ ”.