Sacripanti’s never-built pavilion for Osaka ’70 lives again in VR

Valentina Temporin, architect, and John Volpato, artist and designer, have been introducing virtual reality into their practice as Ultra for several years, not only for the elaboration of projects in the making, but also to bring back to life never realized projects from the past. During the two-year research work Team Enhanced Architectural Modeling, they explored the connections between virtual reality and architecture, creating different immersive experiences including one dedicated to the Pavilion for the 1970 Osaka Expo designed by Roman architect Maurizio Sacripanti. An architecture that was never built, but widely covered by Domus.

“The design of the pavilion is essentially constituted in the following way: 1. A series of fourteen vertical oscillating structures (driven by a pneumatic system) equal to two by two, constrained to a barycentric axis of rotation supported by piers. 2. A deformable covering, made of double sheets of plastic material, attached to the movable elements, such as to follow their oscillations. 3. Eight exhibition levels totaling 3,035 m² useful and a cubic capacity of 17,690 m³.” This is how the pavilion is presented in Domus issue 473 of April 1969. The report of the designers of the Sacripanti Group recounts the International Exposition as an occasion for experimentation, in which to propose a new way of enjoying architectural space, getting at the vision of a space in motion, as the best means of representing Italy in those years within the context of an international event. An ambitious project, born from the very technical possibility of realizing it and proposing the novelty of perceptual parameters, due to a non-static space. “The architect’s task is to take possession of technology and turn it into language,” a language that in the pavilion for Osaka ‘70 is a synthesis of the new perception of continuous mobility of the world, in which time becomes an architectural medium on par with others.

It is precisely the element of movement chosen by Sacripanti that fascinated Valentina Temporin and John Volpato, who told Domus about the genesis of the project and the challenges they faced in moving from drawing to virtual: “In 2019 we had been following a research project on kinetic architecture, and the topic had particularly fascinated us, especially because even today there are not many realized examples of buildings with moving parts. So, when we had to select case studies for the T.E.A.M. research project, we imagined focusing on architecture with these characteristics. That’s how we discovered Maurizio Sacripanti and his visionary projects: among them, the pavilion destined to represent Italy at the 1970 International Exhibition in Osaka, which was never built, caught our attention because not only did it have dynamic parts, but these represented the very premise of architecture, seen as an organic whole, as a structure in continuous evolution. So, we imagined a language that would take the viewer not so much into the building, but into Sacripanti’s own idea of that pavilion.”

The biggest challenge, they explain, was to be able to represent the architect’s idea as correctly as possible, aware that the competition had required only the preliminary design. “We wanted on the one hand to convey the technological aspect, and on the other hand to leave degrees of freedom, in line with what Sacripanti had also chosen to do: not to give all the detailed information of the project in order to make the concept stronger and more incisive”.  

Although it came second in the competition to build the Italian Pavilion for the 1970 Expo and it was never built, Sacripanti’s pavilion was of strategic importance to the history of Italian architecture and beyond, here’s how the founders of ULTRA explain its key points: “First of all, it can be said that Sacripanti was the first architect to outline the idea of a true multidisciplinary team; in his studio in Piazza del Popolo, one could meet engineers, artists, writers, important representatives of the cultural scene of 1960s Rome. Sacripanti was poised between art and its most avant-garde languages and engineering with new scientific discoveries. Into this context comes the design of the kinetic pavilion in Osaka, its foundational components in constant motion managed by an Olivetti Elena 9003 computer”. Another element that makes his project crucial is the hypothesis, hinted at by Sacripanti in one of his writings, of linking the movement of the kinetic blades to the movements of the people within the space, “a project that today we would call interaction design.

Speaking of the present, with respect to the possibilities that VR opens for the architecture of the future, in the relationship between space and technology, also considering the technological advancement of visors, Temporin and Volpato believe in “A fusion of real and virtual, in a concept of space that will be increasingly fluid, seamless between the physical world and virtual scenarios”. The boundary of our perception will extend, they explain, and there will probably be the need to design environments in an integrated way in the different dimensions of an extended reality. 

Ultra 

One then wonders how initiatives in which art and architecture meet virtual reality will develop in the future: “For us, virtual reality, enjoyed through different degrees of immersivity, is a powerful narrative tool that can convey content in a way never experienced before. With some Italian museums we are already thinking about this, imagining being able to bring to life archival documents and works of art and architecture that have never been realized, amplifying their value.” Introducing VR as a means of rendering a work or architecture, then, means building a narrative: connecting the language of the author with the available technological medium, to be able to bring back not only the design but above all the idea, using a language that refers to this idea.

The VR Experience of Osaka ‘70 comes to Milan at the international conference Real Space-Virtual Space. Aesthetics, Architecture and Immersive Environments organized by the ERC AN-ICON project of the University of Milan in collaboration with Triennale Milano on June 19, 20 and 21. Drawing inspiration from Ugo La Pietra’s experiments, with particular reference to the exhibition entitled Real Space-Virtual Space that was held in 1979 at the Milan Triennale, the purpose of the conference, curated by Fabrizia Bandi and Roberto Paolo Malaspina, is to investigate “how Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) create their own artificial space in dialogue with the design and perception of architectural and urban space, fostering productive contaminations and interweavings.” The full program offers an overview of what will be touched upon in the various appointments, including a meeting with artist and designer Ugo La Pietra in dialogue with Damiano Gullì, and to close the conference, on Wednesday 21 at 2 p.m. at Triennale Milano, the opportunity to participate in the VR Experience of Osaka ‘70, for a virtual visit to Sacripanti’s architecture, accompanied by Valentina Temporin and John Volpato of ULTRA. The lectures are open to the public with no registration required. For more information Real Space-Virtual Space - AN-ICON (unimi.it)