Trailer Antidotes to boredom

Not eligible for AIA CES Credits

The lesson pivots around the biography of the architect Cherubino Gambardella, born in 1962 in Naples. Naples at the center, not only of memory, but muse and reference: a multiple city, with "sumptuous" geography, the gulf and the houses, the sky and the sea.

Elements that come back in the production and research of the Neapolitan architect, foundations of the "Mediterranean myth".

If the city of Naples is the thread that guides the entire production - to be understood in the broad sense of a written, spoken and constructed architecture – also other artistic and literary references emerge along the educational path: moments and great figures of architecture as that of Michele Capobianco, John Hejduk and Franco Purini.

Places, people and moments which cross his biography and education represent the antechamber to the explication of the research themes conducted by the architect Cherubino Gambardella: the concept of "democratic beauty", or rather the revaluation of imperfection as an element of the project. Concept that goes hand in hand with the architect's tools: alteration and translation, translating from drawings and sketches as a working method.

Themes of a vast and multifaceted production, where variation, transformation and concept of the Mediterranean emerge. The lesson shows at this point the examples of this action: from the villas in Itri starting from abandoned skeletons to the council estates of the "Corte Blu" in Piscinola, the exhibition pavilions of Expo 2015 and the mobility spaces of the Loreto underground station, the restoration of the Torre dello Ziro and the vocational school in Senegal.

A procedure that clashes with the regulations matter, against the dictatorship of function, starting from beauty. An escape from the Modern to a world based on architectural design and teaching. Contradictions and difficult balances that identify a future that is actually more similar to the eternal present of Sigfried Giedion, leaving freedom of action to the landscape, to the forests, and finding - as architects - an antidote to boredom.

Educational objectives

• You will get to know and deepen the references of the production and research of the architect Cherubino Gambardella: the places and the characters
  
• You will look into the themes and concepts that lie behind the professional practice of architect Gambardella: from the concept of "democratic beauty" to the designer's tools
  
• You will analyze some interventions carried out by the architect together with his wife Simona Ottieri, discovering the reasons and objectives: from the villas starting with skeletons (Villa Capri and White Pumpkin Bunker House in Itri), passing by the Corte Blu and the Unità Aleatoria in Piscinola (Naples) as strategies for public housing, up to restoration projects (Torre dello Ziro) and those for the Milan Tube (Loreto Station) and for the vocational school in Senegal
  
• You will deal with architect Gambardella’s work method, going through the variety and the elements, the choices and the questions raised