FORGIVING ARCHITECTURE

ReMap2, Athens Biennial, 2009

 

The work seems to refer back semantically to Paper/Midwestern Ocean (Minneapolis College of Art and Design, 1971), a provocative “lesson” on the use of physical space given by Pettena in the early seventies. However, the observation is extended here to an urban scale, and the intervention in an existing building that subjects the architecture to a process of transformation acquires a value that metaphorically comprises a multiplicity of messages. In fact the stripes that cover the whole of the building vertically indicate the intention to revitalize it through lightness, renewing its perception as language of communication; something which architecture also ought to be, but which instead is often fossilized in imitations and fashionable manners, homogenizing anonymity, absence of vitality. The air of Athens, its constant breezes, suggest the extent to which nature can “forgive,” can find a poetic communication, like the foliage of a forest in the wind. Nothing can be lighter and more mobile than static architecture!