We have always been fascinated by the spiritual dimension with which paper has been folded in oriental culture since ancient times – the idea that a regular sheet of paper can become a complex shape, only by continually turning in on itself, finding spatiality and edges. Through a series of successive moves, a neutral form, a simple and indifferent matrix develops a refined complexity and precise compositional research at the end of a sequence of actions that can be repeated and varied, codified and handed down. Simple complexity and complexity simplified. In this way, we try to settle the unresolved and perhaps irresolvable conflict between the approach to nature and the conceptual dimension. We reason about the figurative and unintentional reduction of form, as the plastic result of a process of immersion in the place and adherence to the horizons it overlooks. Architecture is then an expected outcome, valorisation of the qualities it encounters. We perceive the contrast – perhaps fertile, perhaps necessary – between the tool of language as a code of interpretation, a worldview, a way of thinking about space, and the indomitable vitality of the work as a response to the most varied contexts and ever-changing events. We welcome it in order to work consistently place by place, case by case as Rogers would say, and to provide solutions to the obvious needs and hidden aspirations of those who inhabit the architecture. According to Lucio Fontana, in art, spatial concepts are interruptions of conventions, openings, evasions, three-dimensional exploration. They are apparent renunciations, an idea, waiting. They are also a monochromatic work. Perhaps also in architecture. So we took a sheet of grey cardboard and folded it, raising edges and enclosing the air between thin planes. That sheet rises, looks around, indicates and retracts, almost hovers in the air. Above, the hard skin protects. Below, the precious nature reveals itself. All this becomes a project, in so many ways and with so many measures.
Metalli Filati, 2021
with Paolo Mezzadri
Photography Paolo Mezzadri
