Interview with Emmanuele Lo Giudice on gaseous architecture and the upcoming congress at the MACRO in Rome
Isplora’s editorial staff met Emmanuele Lo Giudice, architect, artist and researcher, who studied at IUAV and the Politécnica in Madrid. Author of the book “Architettura Gassosa” (Gaseous Architecture), he took part in the Biennale di Architettura 2018 in Venice with a workshop and a seminar in the Spanish pavilion, on the topics of gaseous architecture.
Can you tell the readers of the Isplora magazine something about the idea of “gaseous” architecture”, is it a theory or a provocation? A manifesto or a temporary exhibition?
Gaseous Architecture, presented for the first time in April 2018 in Mexico during an international congress and then at the 16th Biennale di Architettura in Venice in the Spanish pavilion, with a seminar and a workshop, is a small graphic manifesto which is meant to give an architectural response to the transformations that contemporary society has been experiencing in recent decades. The text of gaseous architecture is an invitation to work together towards a possible direction, trying to reach as many people as possible, thanks to its graphic simplicity.
The main change which took place over the past decades was the replacement of “solid” spatial communities, linked to conditions of proximity, with the new forms of social interaction of digital networks, devoid of a definite physical place. Here connections between people are mobile, evanescent, free from neighborhood relationships. They are “gaseous” connections, stimulated by common interests, by the “properties” different individuals have in common, where space and place change from a solid state to an increasingly volatile and gaseous one. What connects them is a space for interaction between independent individual realities, a space of properties made of attractive and repulsive forces that create a well-defined perceptive and performative apparatus.
These types of relations are the main topic of contemporary times and architecture must take charge of working mainly on this. Faced with this condition, architecture as we have intended it so far remains connected to solid formulas. So the question arises: how could architecture behave in front of this reality today? How could it abandon its solidity? This is the question the manifesto of Gaseous Architecture is trying to answer.
As suggested by the title itself, what is suggested is an architecture that recalls the typical properties of gases, capable of invading spaces, always creating new relations that change and adapt to the place and the visitor themselves. According to this idea, architecture is destructured and conceptually reduced to its essential parts, creating a dynamic narrative system, independent and “atmospheric”. At the center there no longer is a geometric and box-shaped space, but a mobile and anthropic space of relations.
Perhaps we are facing another change of state of society and architecture, from solid modernity to Bauman’s liquid postmodernity, what lies ahead of us now? A “gaseous” post-postmodernity?
In 2014, fourteen years after the famous book “Liquid Modernity” was published, Bauman wrote a short essay with Carlo Bordoni, in the form of a dialog, called “State of Crisis”. In this text the “crisis” is not considered a purely economic state of passage, but the symptom of a radical change towards a new condition of contemporary society. As stated by the authors, the crisis starts from the period we call “postmodernity” and Bauman’s doubts regarding this term, which he considered too evasive, led to the need to coin the formula of “liquid modernity”.
For Bauman modernity has always been committed to “replacing falling and run-down solids that were losing their resilience with solids designed rationally and forged in reason, therefore resistant to erosion and deformation”. Postmodernity instead had to focus on dismantling and questioning every solidity “without preparing molds to pour it in once it is melted”. What derives from this is a reality incapable of petrifying itself in a stable form, constantly remaining in a liquid and dynamic state.
But is postmodernity still a current condition? According to Carlo Bordoni no.
After all, postmodernity no longer exists. It is a name given to a period of time between the ‘70s and the end of the 20th century (Bordoni)
A chaotic period that called all values of modernity into question. If postmodernity left us a new “liquefied” world, we could say that the crisis of postmodernity marks a further passage of state, from liquid to gaseous. We could therefore talk about a further development, from a “liquid modernity” to a “gaseous modernity”. The prevailing tendency today is to dematerialize any possible connection, between individuals, between places or the territory, enhancing the volatility and continuous transformation of relations.
The “solid” certainties, which were the basis of reality as we have always known it, were thus replaced by devices and procedures where matter, now gaseous, insinuates itself in every structure, like gas inside a balloon.
The next events for “gaseous” architecture include a congress, from May 28 to 31, and a workshop from June 4 to 9 at the MACRO Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome, can you tell us what will happen in these days?
After the Venice Biennale, it is a great pleasure to be able to discuss and work on the idea of Gaseous Architecture also at the Macro Museum in Rome. They will be very intense days including the congress and workshop, with over 25 guests from different parts of Italy and the world. Both the congress and workshop are free and we expect great participation. The congress will attract a broad audience and will take place from May 28 to 31 at the Sala Cinema of the Macro Museum in Rome, with 4 days of debate.
The following week, from June 4 to 9, will instead be entirely dedicated to an experimentation laboratory where we will study and create, with an eco-friendly material such as cardboard, the first gaseous museum.
Participation to the workshop is free and open to everyone, subject to registration: freelancers, students of Master’s degree courses in architecture, art, design and civil engineering, and scholars interested in the project. Depending on the number of participants, we expect to have from 3 to 4 exhibition spaces.
The entire event was promoted by the Macro museum, the Council of Architects of Rome, the University of Architecture La Sapienza in Rome, the ISIA Institute in Rome, the Fine Arts Academy of Rome, the FAUV University of Mexico, Amate l’Architettura and the Antonio Presti Foundation. The sponsors of the event are: SEKKEI Sustainable Design; the Salcheto winery; Sep t-shirt; Angela Ferraro Home textile.
During the workshop you will work on creating a “gaseous” museum with the company Sekkei, which are the goals and expected results? Who does this museum target? What role does and will Sekkei have in this process?
The idea of creating a Gaseous Museum inside the Macro is very stimulating. There will be the possibility to compare directly two different exhibition processes: the solid building of the Macro Museum and the mobile and convertible one of the Gaseous Museum. The main goal, aside from experimenting on the topic, is to create a dynamic exhibition system, in continuous transformation, putting the relation between the visitor and the work of art at the center. In this museum the idea of a large container disappears and what remains are the works of art protected by cases that expand changing into spaces and interaction devices that people can enter.
The work of the participants and the support and collaboration of Sekkei, who I chose to work with for the professionalism and continuous search for innovation that characterize it, will trigger a close relationship between architects, artists, designers and enterprise. Furthermore, the use of an eco-friendly material such as cardboard is stimulating and paves the way for a dynamic and free way of conceiving architecture.
Museo Gassoso 2 copiaConsidering your commitment to communicating and spreading the manifesto of “gaseous” architecture, we would like to talk about training and continuing education for architects. Which is the road to take in order to offer architects training that is useful and interesting? What would you suggest to CNAPPC [National Council of Architects ]?
Gaseous Architecture is an idea that over a short period of time has earned positive feedback, from individual architects, lecturers and intellectuals and it would be great to be able to count on greater cooperation from CNAPPC. Maybe that is exactly what CNAPPC is lacking: a greater willingness to experiment, offering the opportunity for ever new stimuli.
It is clear that this is a difficult moment for Italian architecture and it is in moments like these that we need to open up and have the courage to experiment, share ideas and dialog.
*For all information on schedules, credits and ways to take part in the event, just send an email to architetturagassosa@gmail.com.
