EverythingAtelier Geers With Jelena Pancevac, Guido Tesio

USI Accademia di architettura Mendrisio Spring Semester 2020

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Alighiero Boetti Tutto (1988)

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This is the first in a series of TUTTI, studios where looking at things results in making things. Our aim is to accumulate cultural manifestations without prejudice, in the belief that the only way to salvage culture, and by extension architecture, is simply by producing it. As we operate in the Europe of today, this is where we will focus our objectives. European Architecture is not a matter of ideological prejudice, but common cultural context. Increasingly, European culture is either considered irrelevant in resolving the challenges we are confronted with, or abused for (political) profit. Much of the confusion seems to be based on a narrow-minded definition of ‘canon’—an attempt to pinpoint a coherent system, which is inevitably exclusive and biased. In opposition to that simplified worldview, we would like to develop TUTTO, everything. Of course, not every ‘everything’ is worth pursuing, and ours is merely a suggestion, however biased itself. Much in the line with Schinkel’s conviction that the history of art is the history of masters, we want to establish such a collection, by choosing a set of ‘doubles’. Each double is difficult, and their dialogue is everything but evident. However, the combination of the two should not delve into a mishmash of fashionable tropes, nor invention of stylistic compounds. This will be a parallel study, as evocative as any such undertaking has to be. The ‘double’ can only be a matter of arbitrary choice, loosely based on shared fascinations, and awareness that it is the sheer accumulation of cases that makes an exercise in Europeanness possible.

RaphaelBofill

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This is the second semester into our parallel inves-tigation of the city and the countryside. In the first semester we made projects for Bellinzona, as big (ex)urban objects for simultaneous living, work-ing and agriculture. Such an attempt was fuelled by Nouvel’s pragmatic formalism and Raphael’s picturesque flatness. This semester we will tackle (the fringes of) the city—the contested ground largely seen at the core of contemporary environ-mental problems. In doing so, we will reconnect to Raphael, and include Ricardo Bofill in the mix. Bringing in this ‘double’ shifts the focus of the narrative we developed earlier. If we deliberately ignored Raphael’s plasticity, and embraced the idea of Nouvel’s screen in the environment de-void of any relevant references, the city obliges us to look beyond the bluntness of the figure, to explore its depths, and consider the (immediate) urban context. This shift means we will implicitly deal with the notion of scale. Raphael’s desire to revive Roman architecture was most ambitiously expressed in his Medici Villa (aka Madama), mod-elled on an ideal Roman villa, and more specifically, Pliny’s Laurentine villa. His remake of a villa “alla

maniera degli antichi”, assumed not only recon-struction and invention, given the reference was known to him only from literary sources, but also adjustment to contemporary circumstances. The villa for the future Pope was to reflect his power and surpass its ancestors. If so: to what extent a villa could increase in scale and still remain a villa?

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Ricardo BofillAntigone: La Place du Nombre d’Or (Montpellier, 1978–84)

RaphaelVilla Madama (Rome, from 1518)

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In a different take on dealing with the scale, Ricardo Bofill sought to propose an apt answer to the French post-war mass housing schemes in the 70s and 80s, drawing upon French neoclassicism and baroque. His monumental housing blocks were to glorify the everyday life of the working class of suburban New towns, a leftist take on Versailles, making palaces for the people. The operation was obviously not an easy one—more than a simple scale-up, it required reinvention of architectural fragments and their novel configuration. Can a plan of a building become a plan of an urban en-semble, and what are the consequences of such a transgression? Our aim for this semester will be to tackle these issues in Milan, by making a set of radical yet appropriated housing figures as a col-lective endeavour. What we hope is to revive the notion of urban formalism suggested by Raphael’s project for Villa Madama, avoiding the (postmod-ern) pitfalls of the grands ensembles of Bofill.

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Ricardo BofillLes Espaces d’Abraxas (Marne-la-Vallée, 1978–82)

RaphaelVilla Madama (Rome, from 1518)

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ABRI [1750 ✕ 1189 mm]

For our second double we will make ABRI per-spectives and A0 plans. The work will be done in groups only. Raphael—Bofill will land in Milan, as a case study of urban palaces, complex Objects on the fringes of the historical city, for contem-porary communal living.

Studio trip Places/Projects

— Villa Madama (TBC) — Les Arcades du Lac — Le Viaduc — Antigone — Les Espaces d’Abraxas

April 1–3

2020

Plan

Perspective

A0 [1189 ✕ 841mm] Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun

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14

21

28

6

13

20

27

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8

15

22

29

2

9

16

23

30

3

10

17

24

4

11

18

25

5

12

19

26