the Architecture of the Feast PIOVENEFABI
Confetti: Matilde Cassani, Tutto, Manifesta 12, Palermo, 2018. Photo: DSL Studio. OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen, After the Party, Venice Architecture Biennale, 2008. Photo: Bas Princen.
Confetti: Very small pieces of coloured paper. As far as we know, used for the first time in architecture by OFFICE. Their form is either round or irregular (i.e. the negative form resulting from random round cuts, next to each other). If you examine them closely, you’ll see that they are normally pieces of recycled paper on which you can still read fragments of texts. Once you have been the subject of a confetti attack, you’ll find them around your house for months, in the most unlikely places. It’s hardly possible that anybody will ever use confetti better than Matilde did in Palermo. Diving: Elegantly falling, while drawing instant invisible lines in the air. A diving platform once became the centre and symbol of our Durana Master Plan (Tirana 2014). In the space of our collage, the kids of Kashar could enjoy a new punctual infrastructure, placed at the centre of a former water reservoir created during the Albanian communist regime to irrigate agricultural fields.
Diving: Piovenefabi, Yellowoffice, Stefano Graziani, Kashar Park, competition, Durana, 2014. Dress: Reproduction of Archizoom’s Studio per la decorazione dei tessuti, 2019. Photo: Simon Boudvin. Habit d’artifice, in Werner Oechslin, Anja Buschow eds., Architecture de fête : L’architecte comme metteur en scène, Mardaga, 1987. Firework: Feux d’artifice, in Werner Oechslin, Anja Buschow eds., Architecture de fête : L’architecte comme metteur en scène, Mardaga, 1987.
Dress: The thinnest possible architecture, a first shelter. For somebody, the only necessary house. Changing dress according to the occasion means choosing the most appropriate architecture for a specific context. Dresses are forcefully transitory and linked to their time and place. With their colour and patterns, they help to define urban space. For the What is Ornament? exhibition, 2A+P/A reproduced the dresses designed by Archizoom for ‘Dressing Design’ (1971). We wore them during the exhibition opening. Everybody: Put your hands up! Firework: Immaterial ornament, lasting the time of an explosion. Maximum yield with minimum effort. Coloured drawing on a black background, it unravels when it reaches its maximum splendour (like the agave flower). If caught in the instant, it shows its geometric perfection, the equitable distribution of the explosion. There is then the minimum degree of firework: the pleasure of the bang as an end in itself – taking one’s breath away. To do: visit Naples on New Year’s Eve.
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