A brief trip in a lift

Sp10 designed a reflective elevator in order to remove the architectural barriers and to ensure equal access to all to the first level of the villa Durazzo Bombrini in Cornigliano, Genova. Shaped as a prismatic volume between the trees and the facade, the small tower mirrors its surroundings.

The project is also inspired to Radicals photomontages of Reflected Architecture, so Piero Frassinelli, a member of Superstudio, wrote something about it.

“As soon as I saw that tower of mirrors I felt attracted to it and wanted to go and see what was inside. Those who, like us, have long been pondering upon mirrors know that it is easy to enter them: it is enough to go towards them with assurance, without stopping when the cold surface is felt; for a second one sees the reflection of one’s own back, and thus becomes aware of having reached the inside.

Thus I found myself inside a lift cabin which was also entirely made of mirrors; the infinite setting, created by the repeated reflections and fading all around me in the darkness of distance (owing, as I well knew, to the incomplete transparency of the glass), of course reminded me of the environment we created for MoMA in 1972. Now, though, all that was left was the white checked floor, reflecting the lift’s panel which, thus mirrored with its push-buttons and luminous displays, multiplied to make up images which floated in space, in a surreal manner.

I started to walk through that neutral space; the absence of the lichen hedge and of the panel with its twinkling coloured lights, made everything seem strange; along with the image of the Supersuperficie (‘Superface’), the very idea of it had disappeared, just now, when technology could almost realise that libertarian utopia of ours, the only positive one we had been able to create. But the Western world, in these forty years, led its desires towards an opposite direction: whilst we were pointing at the end of architecture in that it was now replaceable by technology, an arid, fanciful and muscular hyper-monumentality was being pursued; the architects designed monuments to themselves and to their principals, in which the improvement of life conditions appeared as an alibi to justify hyperbolic costs and crazy ambitions, even when it was among the project objectives.

Now, going along that space deprived of our earlier hopes, it was only the presence of the floating panels that obliged me to some change of direction, complicated by the fact that, as I well knew, the right and left-hand side were inverted. I felt lonely and saddened; I was about to turn round and go back, when from the dark horizon two figures started to take shape, coming towards me: a boy, wearing only a pair of baggy brown trousers in light canvas cloth, and a girl wearing a long sand-coloured dress, in the same kind of fabric. When they came across me they said ‘ciao’ with a marked North-American accent; I recognised them: they were the hippies who inhabited our photomontages of the Supersuperficie, or anyhow, they would have been perfect inhabitants for it, had it still existed. I turned round to look at them; after taking a few steps they disappeared: the sight of their backs which, in the mirror, coincided at the last moment with their front reflection, led me to realise they had left.

There was nothing else to see; I had no reason to press the ‘going up’ buttons, as I knew none of the house’s inhabitants; so I left too, trying, as a challenge, to prolong the view of my back at the moment of crossing; in order to do so, therefore at that very moment, I rocked backwards and forwards; but the only result was a slight dizziness. I found myself outside. The two young people were in front of me, lying on the ground, in the sun; they had taken their shoes off. While I was going through the open space, I noticed that it too was check, just like the floor of the lift; here the squares were much bigger, but it was more than ever noticeable there were no lichen hedges or machines to satisfy vital needs.” Gian Piero Frassinelli (Superstudio), April 2014

External elevator, Cornigliano, Genova, Italy
Architects: Sp10
Client: Società per Cornigliano
Completion: 2014