Current Issue: Domus 1002

In this issue

A gift to Milan

In May editorial Nicola Di Battista affirms that the Lombard capital is once again expressing a sentiment that can also be quickly transmitted to the ever-increasing numbers of people flocking to visit the numerous initiatives and the many cultural events offered by the city.

Domus 1002

Cover: graphic reworking of the storyboard drawn by Mimmo Paladino for the film narrating his L’albero della cuccagna, work, Lecce, 2016

Editorial: A gift to Milan

Last September we had hoped that Milan might once again become a truly contemporary place of our contemporaneity: a city fully aware of its means, with the capacity to compete on a par with today’s global world. A city with a renewed desire to be at the forefront and to be so by rising out of itself, from its own potential and from what Italy can express. A city keen to cultivate ambitions, not by chasing after other people’s dreams but starting from what it has and what already permanently belongs to it.

A story of numbers and the Baroque

Art and numbers, urban space and local tradition are all woven tightly together in the latest work by Mimmo Paladino in Lecce. Here the art critic Toti Carpentieri and the mathematician Michele Emmer both speak about the project, created for the “L’Albero della cuccagna. I nutrimenti dell’arte” initiative curated by Achille Bonito Oliva.

One, two, three... Ideas for a storyboard

Bildung-Building

“Education-building”. “Education-edification”. For Renato Rizzi the ideal and ever-topical teaching programme for any School of Architecture is implied in this semantic constellation, where building is equivalent to edifying a community – of places, forms, minds, ideals: what we commonly call landscape.

School of Architecture and Design, RMIT University, Melbourne

Operating according to an experimental studio model, with a particular focus on technology as applied to landscapes, cities and objects, the Australian school – also based in Ho Chi Minh City and Barcelona – teaches that architecture is the result of a dialogue between multiple strongly expressed opinions, and that it must be guided by designers.

Lessons on authentic modernity

In his recently published book L’altro Movimento Moderno, Kenneth Frampton sets out and develops an area of research that has fascinated him since his undergraduate training: the rediscovery of the programmatic vein in the Modern Movement that was obscured for many years by the official history. Pierre-Alain Croset reviews the book, while Frampton himself explains the thinking behind it.

Apropos an other modernity

Subtle: delicate or infinitesimal

Every year since 1965 the specialist paper manufacturer Takeo has organised an exhibition to investigate the potentialities of paper. For its latest exhibition, held in Milan to mark the XXI Triennale, the curator Kenya Hara has chosen to reflect on the extreme delicacy of this material to bring out its design essence.

Gerhard Steidl: the story of a publisher through the words of one of his artists

Publishing a book with the “book genius” is an endeavour that takes time, patience and passion. The photographer Domingo Milella, who spent five years on his, tells of his personal and artistic adventure in the magical Steidlville, a cavern full of dreams, images and stories.

Tippet Rise Art Center, Fishtail, Montana, USA

The Spanish studio Ensamble pushes architectural design to its limits, understanding it as a gesture of reflection that learns from natural processes and develops through action and experimentation with materials and space – a process whose extreme experimentation is exemplified in their ambitious “living design” set in the spectacular landscape of the Beartooth Mountains.

The development of design should be a collective endeavour

The lessons of the wise maestros of the last century teach the value of collective endeavour, bringing together the skills of architecture, urban and industrial design, as well as the importance of working in continuity with positive examples, avoiding that showmanship of one-of-a-kind forms which turns buildings into works of pure artistic experimentation.

La Porte Romaine, Nîmes, France

Norman Foster has a robust connection to Nîmes where, in 1993, he built a mediatheque beside the Maison Carrée Roman temple. He now returns to the historic fabric of this French city with an apartment building of strong public worth that strikes a masterly balance between traditional iconography and sophisticated construction details.

Kunstmuseum Basel Extension

The extension of Basel’s Kunstmuseum brings an uncomplicated but unique presence to the old city fabric. Compact and sculptural, it contains a monumental circulation system leading to large exhibition galleries that will host one of Switzerland’s most important contemporary art collections.

Suburban housing, Aldershot

With the creation of seven suburban villas, the result of a long design process which led both architects and client to re-examine the original proposal in order to better adapt it to the location, the English studio has created a micro-housing development which majestically balances domestic environments with communal areas.

Exhibition Design in the Palestra Grande in the Pompeii Archaeological Site

After creating a pyramid in the Pompeii Amphitheatre, Francesco Venezia returns to the same archaeological site with a new intervention. Compositional skill and virtuoso craftsmanship mark the insertion of this new exhibition space in the north wing of the Palestra Grande portico: it is a true machine for exhibiting, creating a subtle interplay of memories and analogies between ancient and modern, between archaeology and museology.

Salone del Mobile 2016

The Salone inside and out

Salone del Mobile 2016. Seven points of view

Feedback: La Torino di Carlo Olmo

Elzeviro: The cathedral and the ship

To inhabit means to design one’s own individuality but it also entails entering into relationships with others. This is why the history of cities is also the history of civilisation, how we structure our space and our time, even though it regards a ephemeral collocation.