Since 1990, Interni magazine has been one of the main organizers of the Design Week accompanying the Milan Furniture Salon. The curators of this year's project asked themselves a difficult question - what from the abundance of design and architectural ideas around us, from everything that has passed the test of time and what we value today, will form a legacy for future generations? What will it be in terms of technology, materials, production? How will the relationship of historical heritage, modern architecture and design of the future be realized?
The exhibition opened on April 16 in the building of the Milan State University (Universita degli Studi di Milano). A huge two-story red-brick building, stretching for an entire block, began construction in 1456 and was originally intended for a hospital. Inside, as in many other seemingly impregnable houses in Milan, there are bright courtyards with two-story galleries around the perimeter. It was in these courtyards and galleries that the installations of the Interni Legacy project participants were housed.
French architect Odile Deck presented her message to the future in the form of a 4.5-meter cube, consisting of 31 porcelain plates. An invisible cone runs diagonally across the cube, creating a contrast between the solid surface and the void. Depending on the point of observation, the object appears either as a dense volume, or becomes almost transparent, "splitting" the space that shines through it into many separate fragments. The composition was named 3D X1 Multi Slice View.
The Surface installation by brothers Alessandro and Francesco Mendini took the most prominent place in the main courtyard, directly opposite the entrance. Nine flat surfaces of various heights and shapes, with ornaments applied to their surface using inkjet printing, resemble an altar or theatrical scenery, which constantly changes depending on the light and time of day.
Michele De Lucchi, together with Philippe Nigro, built a metal platform at the very entrance to the courtyard, offering to look and evaluate the surrounding reality from a new unusual point. The structure consists of 4 platforms of waxed dark gray cast iron that decrease upwards, connected by steps and topped with an ash pergola.
Italian architect Massimo Iosa Ghini presented his project in the form of a nine-meter tower lined with ceramic slabs imitating stone - a material that has served as a source of inspiration for architects and sculptors from time immemorial. Through a cut in the slabs, an LED screen shines through, on which the "memory" of the stone, its present and future are imprinted in a symbolic form.
A little to the left of the entrance, the Chinese architect Zhang Ke "raised" three different-sized snow-white stalagmite. His installation is called Village Mountains. Residents of mountainous villages in China are gradually moving to cities, but the desire to live in the mountains in their home remains unchanged - to satisfy this desire, the architect proposes to create mountains in the city, giving each family a separate honeycomb-like cell in which they could create their home. In this way, he plans to achieve harmony between tradition and modern urban lifestyle.
And in a nearby small courtyard, a sprawling tree made of solar panels was planted by the Japanese architect Akihisa Hirata. This project, sponsored by Panasonic, is called Photosynthesis and is a miniature power system - a conceptual prototype of the architecture of the future. The architect drew inspiration by observing the life of an ordinary tree and the interaction of its individual parts: leaves, fruits and flowers. Leaves-batteries generate energy, which makes numerous small “flowers” bulbs and huge glowing balls-“fruits” scattered on the lawn and hung in the galleries around the courtyard to “blossom” - to glow.
The art object of SPEECH Choban & Kuznetsov is located in the main courtyard, in the corner to the right of the entrance. The corner location, between a darkened gallery and a brightly lit lawn, favorably emphasizes the perfection of the object's shape - a sphere with a mirrored surface, which effectively reflects the two-tiered colonnade of the building, blue sky, grass and people passing by.
According to Sergei Kuznetsov, an installation is something temporary that does not pretend to be eternal, but its execution must be flawless (Taltos, part of the Velko Group, was responsible for the execution), and the idea is simple and clear at first glance. After all, the viewer spends about a minute to inspect the object, as a rule, and during this time he must grasp the whole essence of the installation without unnecessary explanations and reading an explanatory note. The train of thought during the creation of the installation was something like this: whoever creates objects of heritage directly is an architect, and he does this, first of all, with the help of his organs of vision - he looks, sees, rethinks and only then creates. The architect's eye in this case is the most important tool; it serves as a filter between the past and the future. This is exactly the name of the installation - "Architect's Eye".
The symbolic and metaphorical image of the eye is a stainless steel sphere with a diameter of 2.5 meters, polished to a mirror shine, with a glass lens facing the center of the courtyard. Through the lens, an LED screen is visible, on which images imitating the behavior of the pupil of the human eye are continuously replaced by photographs of the famous monuments of the Russian avant-garde, which are on the verge of destruction. As a result, the dialogue between the installation and the historical environment is conducted on an equal footing and turns out to be incredibly sharp. It has neither familiarity, nor uncomplaining worship, and its clear message is instantly read: our "tomorrow" will not come if we neglect our "yesterday".
