Laura Ferrarello's portfolio by Laura Ferrarello

laura ferrarello’s work

threshold Light Fixture

Il Cielo in una Stanza//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// 12 Luoghi di Incontro///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// 28 Aedo///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// 36 Vucciria 2.0/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// 48 Natura Apparente////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// 66 c: art////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// 76 Let’s Grow Food/ Let’s meet in the Kitchen////////////////////////////// 82 A project for a contemporary piazza in Pruitt Igoe

Master in Architectural and Urban Studies awarded with Distincion

iTravel/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// 90 Corviale facebook Page

Profile//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// 96 blueprints//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// 106

techniques Blossoming//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////112 Partire, Lasciare, Ricordare//////////////////////////////////////////////////// 122 Peack&Poly. An urban place for Downtown LA//////////////////// 138 Sci-Arc Spring Show 2011

Lollypop Wall/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// 150 Handy Bag////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// 160 Drawings///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// 170

narratives “forecasting water lilies”////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// 190 art competition for Shantou University Library China

The Hortus Conclusus//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// 200 The exhibition space and library for the illuminated manuscripts

S p a c e i n t i m e//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// 206 t h e s t o r y o f t h e a n c i e n t t r a v e l e r/// 206 take your own time////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// 214 The City Of Music @ Lombardia Castle Enna, Italy/////////////// 218 Graduation Thesis.

Awarded with the Rotary Award. Best thesis 2007

Cartoline da Ischia (Greetings from Ischia)//////////////////////////// 222 Installation for Expressioni 2007

Social Housing, Mestre Venice/////////////////////////////////////////////// 224 PhD Workshop

graphic design Elena Manferdini, “The Domain of Drawings”///////////////////////// 240 Monograph

“La Geometria come Strumento di Invenzione”///////////////////// 246 PhD Thesis, IUAV University of Venice

“La Poetica del Ritmo”/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// 250 Bruno Zevi Award thesis partecipant

“(im)material process”//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// 256 2008 Beijing Architectural Biennale Catalogue

“MA Architectural and Urban Studies”//////////////////////////////////// 260 Book design during my MA at Brighton University

“La Città della Musica nel Castello di Lombardia Enna”//////// 268 Book design for my Undergraduate Thesis at the University of Rome

writings La Geometria Come strumento di Invenzione./////////////////////// 272 Il concorso del Palazzo del Littorio dei 7 di ‘Quadrante’///////// 272 Architectural Design PhD Thesis

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EatMeDrinkMe Installation

Dates: March 2014- April 2014 Location: London Designer: Laura Ferrarello Material: Ceramic tiles and aluminum Dimensions: 124 x 4300 cm

Which kind of service art offers to 2.0Society, whose experience of the world comes via images that take users to place interaction as core activity of Being and Dwelling this world? This is the trigger of my proposal, whose main reference is the 1952 Disney “Alice in Wonderland” cartoon. In order to access Wonderland Alice needs to change her physical aspect. This happens though drinking water and eating biscuits. The Art Fair is an experience per se; visitors experience artist’ narratives that carry complexities through visual content. My work is thought to be at the entrance and, like Alice, it plays like drink and biscuit by preparing visitors to enter the main event. EATmeDRINKme explores, to reinvent, the basic artistic concept of Subject/Object by making Object domain of many 2.0Subjects, which act as social networks by holding real and physical shape that never leaves the real. When visitors walk through the entrance see a flat surface, 2,40x4,30m tiled in 2160 ceramics and hold by an aluminium frame behind, whose pattern refers to Baroque Sicilian ceramic floors. Nevertheless the surface is no longer flat: it folds three times around the space. The stable and familiar architectural concept of floor, made to last undefined time, slips, hits the walls and folds. Its rigidity becomes fluid and inverts the familiar perception of space where floors are horizontal and under our feet. Like Alice in the chamber before Wonderland, things are not like are supposed to be, floors are ceiling and viceversa. My proposal flips visitor’s familiar perception of real space, to prepare them to Wonderland, i.e. Reality. The Subject makes users investigate (un)familiar perception of the Real by reversing stereotypes. To achieve it some of the tiles are mirrors, which engage visitors by taking their image to Wonderland: the door is passed.

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Il Cielo in una Stanza Light Fixture

Dates: June 2013- July 2013 Location: Enna, Italy Designer: Laura Ferrarello Material: Acrilic and vinyl Dimensions: 125 x 97.5 cm

Il Cielo in una stanza (A Piece of Sky Under the Roof) is a light fixture for a private house. It is located on the top of the staircase at the arrival step of the second floor. The house is a pitched roof detached house and the location of the light fixture is not easily reached by natural illumination; hence the idea to bring a piece of sky under the roof. The literal image of the sky printed on the inclined surface of the fixture becomes a visual imaginative vehicle that virtual extents the constrained horizon of the interior space to project it towards the exterior. In order words the light fixture becomes a vehicle to reconstitute a virtual imaginative horizon in the interior space of the house. As a consequence the experience of looking the sky from the interior space triggers an individual imagination, so that the literal sky can be a virtual moment of interior fantasy, as if looking outside at the sunset. The image of a real sky is vehicle for a virtual experience. In order to create and enhance the experience a neon light is placed at the back of the inclined surface. The latter is made of transparent acrylic on which both sides there are two layers of adhesive vinyl; one transparent – on the exterior surface – one opaque –on the interior one. The blurred light of the neon light passes through both surfaces and takes the colours, which are mixed together, as if in a painting board, as the two vinyl layers overlap. The effect is a multicolour semitransparent inclined plane that defines a new uncertain horizon of imagination.

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Texture. The overlapped opaque and transparent layers

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Elevation

Test print of the opaque and trasparent vinyl on acrilic

Luoghi di Incontro

Dates: December 2013- February 2014 Location: Border Bodies Mixing Identities, Bari, February 13-26 2014 Designer: Laura Ferrarello Material: Acrilic, Mirror and vinyl Dimensions: 43 x 44 cm

“Luoghi di Incontro” celebrates space as place of interaction; it is a mechanism for an acknowledged understanding of the surrounding, which, conversely to any traditional depiction whose interpretation is limited to the object of representation, attracts the viewer through a ‘revealed’ reflective surface. By looking through bits of details within the image, a reflected image of you appears; the mystified viewer’s reaction triggers wonder, which interrogates the nature of things as ‘seen’ through our eyes. Indeed, in “Luoghi d Incontro” the ‘frontal’ image is second layer, which peels out of the wall and reveals another interpretation of the subject, which still doesn’t resemble the ‘objective’ Real; what am I seeing here? Where is the ‘real exhibited image’? What we understand as solid objective reference is just another subjective interpretation of the real.

Detail of the vinyl graphic

Unfold of the graphic

Process of fabrication

Aedo

Dates: March 2013- April 2013 Location: London Design Team: Laura Ferrarello

Aedo is a ‘leaned’ tapestry inspired by William Morris’s Art and Craft Movement. With the intent of re-establishing harmony between the ‘unnatural’ English Industrial Revolution society and Mother Nature - by means of the accessibility provided by conveyor belt production - Morris designed a series of patterns for interior decoration based on natural forms. Nevertheless natural patterns represented an occasion for society to regain the Arcadia age, i.e. the ancient Greek paradise where human being lived in harmony with its environment. Aedo’s pattern re elaborates and extents Morris’s concept in contemporary digital society. Indeed, if Morris’s tapestries were means for bringing society back to Arcadia, Aedo warns its public of the common loss of touch with the real – which is nature itself - because of the deliberate and acknowledged attitude of escaping reality via digital filters applied to it. In other words the common use of app filters detaches ‘users’ from their real, which, on its turn, becomes just an imaginary scenario rendered as custom depiction. If in Morris society natural landscapes were vehicles for creating a new bound with nature, via industrial production, Aedo uses the language of digital culture for re engaging people with the real, as it becomes a particular ‘analogue’ filter applied to the surrounding with whom people interact. The aedo was a storyteller living in the ancient Greece in charge of transmitting and preserving culture via stories. In other words the aedo was the person in charge of filtering the real with myth to transfer current generation’s values to posterity. In the space of the Tent London Aedo ‘filters’ the surrounding. However it leans down. The melted fantastic scenario printed on it and the leaning position are the interactive kernels: Morris’s design is melted and the tapestry does no longer stand on a wall. This combination engages visitors, as it becomes Aedo’s visual message, or story, to tell visitors. As its ancestor, Aedo filters real and digital realms by mystifying their role in society. While crumbling, Aedo’s graphic melts and with it the harmony between men and nature represented by Morris. This is a reaction from people’s loss of touch with the real. In

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other words Morris’ tapestry – work for re-establish harmony- leaves the vertical wall and crumbles. Hence it follows Aedo’s invitation to reflect upon our tendency of dwelling fantasies for detaching from the real.

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Vucciria 2.0

Dates: January 2013- February 2013 Location: Catania Exhibition Fatti Conoscere Into a CubeMay - September 2013 Design Team: Laura Ferrarello

Vucciria2.0 is an interactive cube designed for the exhibition “Fatti Conoscere” in Catania, Italy. The design process together with the relation that the cube establishes with the gallery space explain my vision of making architecture in our society, which is hybrid between the digital and the real. The cube is at first memory of my land, Sicily, whose coat, made of a colorful graphic, is modelled around Renato Guttuso’s painting “La Vucciria”, the farmer market in Palermo. When I think about Sicily this painting comes to my mind, as I think it synthesis the Sicilian life style; colorful grocery is exhibited on inclined shelves and small labyrinth paths branch through them, to the extent that it is not possible to not cross somebody’s way. Vucciria2.0 abstracts these elements by placing the cube on a mirrored podium where visitors, and the graphic itself, reflect their image. The mirrored podium becomes then an interactive platform that somehow recreates the crowded streets of Palermo’s farmer market. The crowd feeling is rendered by the kaleidoscopic effect defined by the infinite repetition of the reflected images, which, on their turn, enhance colors, the memory of my land. To add reflections fluidity I cut the edges of the cube so that perspective rays can run through the edges and the reflection points are multiplied. The edge cuts are modelled around Futuristic paintings, in particular Umberto Boccioni, where the motion effect is visually represented by faceted figures. In other words the figural turns abstract to interpret the way human eyes see and perceive figures in motion. Architecture is for me a value applied to constructions, which enriches them with a sensorial perception caught by senses not by the eye. Through balanced relations, architecture can offer a social value to communities that bring a shared respect for coexistence. Architecture is then a form of art directed to community to which it provides spaces for cohabitation. Within these terms aesthetic is a vehicle that interfaces our thoughts, memories and collective coexistence. Although ideas belong to the single, or a restricted group of people, public display make them part of com-

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munity. For me this is the most exciting moment of making architecture. My work intents to engage, either you may agree or not, viewers asked to interact with it. My work completes its process of communication when the individual act becomes collective. For this reason I called the cube Vucciria 2.0. I am referring to the second generation of web pages, such as blogs and social networks, which expect the user to interact with content. Vucciria 2.0 extents in space and time the “poiesis” of design, whereas the act of exhibiting makes architecture dynamic –a platform- that projects its essence beyond aesthetic.

Image of the exhibition gallery

Natura Apparente

Dates: October 2013 Dimension: 90 x 70 cm Medium: Printed Canvas

“Natura Apparente” is based on the “Still Nature” iconography (Natura Morta), where a yellow mouse, a Hard Disk, a graphic and a mother board lay on the top of tilted rough surface. “Natura Apparente” employs and takes to the extreme traditional chiaroscuro shades, which are interrupted by digital touches of brushes and ghostly fabric; these brushes point out that there is another matter beyond the depicted one, another kind of real. The bunch of technological stuff is then just vehicle of different realities in the digital world. Brushes work like Lucio Fontana’s cuts applied to canvas. There is another real, a kind that makes the depicted one a labile ontological state.

c: art

Dates: June 2011- July 2011 Location: Los Angeles Design Team: Laura Ferrarello

“C:Art” is an app that makes art, society and urban territories interact by means of art gallery and museum data. What can art communicate in the space of a gallery? Visitors roaming through gallery rooms usually experience artwork aesthetic side. The displayed work passively appears as a steady object hung on the wall or free standing in a constrained space. Nevertheless the artist’s intent of thinking and producing a painting, sculpture, installation and so on, goes beyond the aesthetic sense per se caught in the gallery. Aesthetic and techniques are just vehicles to delivery ideas; indeed, any artwork is thought within a specific social environment to the extent that it may become manifesto, provocation or a simple reflection of its own culture. This complex system that defines artwork poiesis doesn’t stand up when artists communicate with viewers in the space of a gallery room. “C:Art” wants to extent visitor’s experience beyond aesthetic and techniques; its intent is communicating the social value of any artwork. Through Augmented Reality visitors understand the gallery space by means of the exhibited work. The stream of curators’ thoughts, expressed by the exhibition display, comes together in the screen of a mobile device. By pointing your smartphone to the artwork an info box pops up. Beside basic information the box provides a YouTube link that connects the viewer to a video related to the social environment where the artwork has been created. Furthermore users can tap in the “Places” icon and confront the artist’s interpretation with the ‘real’ location, whether applicable. Viewers can also tap the icon “You may want to know” that displays other artists working in the same period but with other different techniques so that they build up an extended artist network related to the same subject, which however goes beyond it. C:Art wants viewers involved in the painting narrative by engaging visitors through different media – video, music, literatures – so that art can emerges as social form of expression.

Edward Ruscha Bio

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Edward Ruscha

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Ed Ruscha's influence can be seen in graphic design, cinema, architectural theory, and urban history. His art depicts everyday objects – gas stations, street signs, billboards, commercial packaging – yet often triggers philosophical reflection about the relationship between words, things, and ideas. The word “standard” is a case in point: it can be a banner or rallying point, an established level of quality, and an oil company’s brand name. In his depictions of Standard stations, Ruscha points to each of these definitions and more. LACMA's collection includes more than 300

C:Art. Check Current and past exhibitions at LACMA.

Made in California

All the info rendered in this project are from LACMA exhibition “Ed Ruscha: Standard”, http://www.lacma.org/art/exhibition/ed-ruscha-standard (accessed on November 2012)

Navigate the space by the Augmented Reality

1963 - 1964 Cities Service gas station TV commercial

American society in 1950

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Tap the You Tube link to learn more about American society at Ed Ruscha’s “Standard” time.

You may want to know

Check the place of Ed Ruscha’s “Hollywood”.

Places

You may want to know

Julius Schlmann, Mobil Gas Station, Smith and Williams, Anaheim, 1956. ÂŠ J Paul Getty Trust.

Places

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thresholds Julius Schlmann, Looking over Griffith Observatory and Los Angeles from Mount Hollywood, 1936. ÂŠ Craig Krull Gallery.

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Learn about Ed Ruscha contemporary artists, such as architectural photographer Julius Shulman

Let’s Grow Food/ Let’s meet in the Kitchen A project for a contemporary piazza in Pruitt Igoe

Dates: February 2012- March 2012 Location: Pruitt Igoe, St Louis Design Team: Laura Ferrarello

Within an urban environment communities of people meet in those spaces the city provides for social interactions. Whether public or private, these spaces may trigger social interactions so that individuals acknowledge neighbours. Contemporary society is defined by a melting pot of different cultures that dwell and share the same space. Nevertheless the coexistence of diversities may be difficult because of different social behaviours and urban discontents may affect the form of the city and entail separation and marginalization. Nonetheless food is always being a good system for joining different people in the same space, to the extent that it can be used as system to flat possible controversies and understand diversities. “Pruitt Igoe, Let’s grow food (Harvest)/ Let’s meet in the kitchen (cuisine)” is a combined project for the area previously occupied by the social housing complex blow up in the 1970s. The combined project employs different agents who are involved in the creation of a community of diverse cultures coexisting in the same urban space. Food is the barycentre around which the system of harvesting and cooking revolves in order to trigger an urban and social space for the contemporary city. The intent is flipping the perception of former Pruitt Igoe area: from a space of marginalization to a space of socialization via the creation of a farmer market (Let’s grow food - Harvest) and a traditional recipe book (Let’s meet in the kitchen - Cuisine). In other words the project wants to challenge the concept of ‘piazza’ to define a contemporary urban space of social interactions that takes place between the digital and real environment; at the same time the project’s intent is creating events of social interactions by merging and contaminating different cultures. The result is a hybrid space and culture that negotiate with contemporary social conditions. Indeed the ‘piazza’ is created in the space of the virtual, by means of the interaction with the recipe books “Let’s meet in the kitchen” and the real space of farmer market “Let’s Grow food”. Because of real and virtual interactions these two agents challenge the traditional concept of

urban dwelling. “Let’s meet in the kitchen” / “Let’s Grow food” would like to give Pruitt Igoe area back to the city by assigning it to local famers. At the same time the tablet recipe book, “Let’s meet in the kitchen” interfaces citizen with farmers (hence virtual and real interaction are enabled). The book merges together culture diversities by means of contaminating traditional recipes; the market makes them meet by buying groceries. “Let’s meet in the kitchen” behaves as a social network game; at the beginning there are some of the most typical and popular St Louis recipes which can be edited by different other cultures. The recipes page provides a map that locates ingredients in farmer stands; there is also a calendar where seasonal harvest is listed, as well as local wellness events. Your “Home Page” lists the most used recipes as edited by your own taste, which can be viewed by other social food network users. “Let’s meet in the kitchen” / “Let’s Grow food” main intent is extending and connecting urban and virtual space experiences where St Louis community dwells. Digital and real meet together to create a hybrid space defined by its citizens. Nevertheless the trigger of such experience is public interactivity of changing food recipes, which keeps the loop of social interactions. Let’s then eat together!

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Stickers of the project.

”Let’s meet in the kitchen” iPad app. “Let’s grow food” famer logo.

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Traditional St Louis recipe and ingredients at Pruitt Igoe farmer market “Let’s grow food”

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Make your own recipe. Edit the traditional St Louis one.

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Whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;a happening at the farmer market? Need extra grocery? Roll the calendar totake a note of your events.

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Your recipes. Tap in your most popular recipe to make your best meal again! Share them to other users.

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iTravel Master in Architectural and Urban Studies awarded with Distincion

Dates: June 2008- February 2009 Location: University of Brighton, UK MA Architectural and Urban Studies Design Team: Laura Ferrarello

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Green route to travel through London by TFL, Transport for London.

ITravel is an interactive plug-in designed for the public transport in London. Combining available resources and new technologies it improves the system of moving across the city though the public transports network in order to encourage people to use it, reduce private transports and CO2 emissions. My first observation, for this project, was to think of a sustainable system able to involve all city fluxes by working with an urban scale. This created a new overlapping layer whose function was to complete the existing system, not in order to substitute but to compensate it. Secondly I recognized the main reason why the public transport is undervalued: the lack of information. London public transport system connects the city through an utility service that is more accurate than people are really aware of.

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Apple iphone is an constantly wireless-connected mobile able also to show, step by step, our location. What if using this characteristic of wireless could connect us with buses? What if our mobile phone could tell us location of the nearest bus stop, which bus we had to take and when it would to arrive? What if software could show us the best way to reach our destination? This is iTravel. Using the available TfL information, the interconnection with Google map and the iphone interface, iTravel firstly asks us whereas we want to travel the Fastest, Cheapest or Eco way; secondly we need only to type our address and a Google map page will show us where the nearest bus stop is. ITravel designs the whole route for us: which bus, for how many stops we need to travel, where we have to get off and what our next step would be signaling it through an alarm analogue to a text message. According to our needs, it can also make up the best route to reach parks, shopping centers, football stadiums, universities, bars, restaurants, cinemas and so on. This system deletes the concept of “waiting for a bus” and of “bus stop” as well. The ITravel concept creates only “interchange” points made of projecting the TfL logo in order to point out where the bus stops. Instead of “waiting for” iTravel allows us to say “moving” by buses.

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Who supported us? We were funded by CETLD, the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning through Design. We also had huge support from section b’, the student architectural society, Brighton University, Tony Rodriquez in Estates, the caretaking team at Mithras House, Catherine Harper and also Anne Asha from the CETLD team.

information about public transportation systems and allows us to navigate our cities in a more sustainable way. We already have satellite navigational systems for our cars. In effect iBus is simply a plug-in for satellite navigational systems that is designed to help us navigate public transportation.

This article looks at another CETLD funded student project: iBus – a revolutionary programme for navigating public transportation designed for iPhone. iBus operates as an interface between the iPhone’s satellite navigational systems and on-line public information systems, in order to calculate optimal public transportation routes.

Phone+cityisacompositeread-writemedium,allowing forrealtimecommunicationthroughmultiplemodes,now andinsitu,andrepresents,incombination,animportant infrastructureofanyemergentglobaldemocraticsociety.

According to Benjamin Bratton the iPhone made our city our home: Googling, checking on this and Who do we need to thank? that,editingessays on our iPhones.Thisis thehomeand We would particularly like to thank Nikki Pipe and office. We don’t always need to arrive, because we’re Jyri Kermit for their support in the initial phases already there: if this was your home, you’d live here of the project and also Jim Wilson, Tony Roberts, by now. The iPhone culture shows and foretells a Adrian Krumins, Claire Hoskin, Dawn Whitaker and probable scenario of our way of living cities. We no Pete Marsh for their support during the build phase. longer need to move from one point to another in Also, a huge big thank-you to our graphic designer an analogue fashion to find out about transportation friends, The Entente, www.the-entente.org opportunities; the iPhone can solve our queries in advance through digital means in order to speed up What happens next? and fast forward our travel plans. We’re extremely pleased with the work we’ve done in the last year and hope to take the exhibition to How can we properly theorise the digital at the scale of other locations in Brighton University and the RIBA the city, and the city rendered as digital media? in London. Hopefully concrete couch has inspired other students to give a project like this a go in the In the past few years PSP or XBox culture has future. changed our conception of space and time, turning very precise distances into relative concepts . In Jeremy Diaper fact through the perception of our reality as a video Project Leader, concrete couch game the iPhone is only a simple consequence of an already stable attitude. Video games screens turn into urban maps, obstacles to surpass turn into our iBus: queries and the final score turns into the arrival at Navigating the city on buses our destination.

For anyone living in the contemporary metropolis, the idea of navigating the city on buses would seem to be a nightmare from which everyone would like to wake up. After all, taxis are much easier to use. Buses may be cheaper and more environmentally sustainable than taxis, but with their obscure schedules and complex routes buses are far less accessible and convenient. But iBus could change this all too common negative attitude towards buses; this software can establish a new way of inhabiting our cities as it creates a revolutionary digital interface for the iPhone that gives us vital

iBus doesn’t invent any new information. It simply recontextualises the existing. iBus is a way to introduce an existing digital interface in our relationship with cities; iBus triggers and leads us to use our digital thinking to offer transportational solutions in our everyday life . Let’s start playing with our everyday problems . Extending the easy iPhone interface concept, we can digitally plan our journey in real time through clicking on a simple icon. The iPhone is already able to track our position. All we need to do is use iBus to input our destination, and it automatically selects for us the optimal route. In fact the user-friendly design is able to show the information we need when we need it. How would we like to travel? Through the fastest, most eco-

friendly or cheapest journey? iBus plans for us our journey while, at the same time, allowing us to top up our Oyster cards or learn more about potential traffic congestion. With all the information at our fingertips, we are already traveling even before starting out. iBus extends our way of perceiving our cities; there is no space, no time to travel through; we project a digital thinking into the ‘real’ world. Satellite navigational maps show us where we are and where we have to go for a specific journey. It is a system which supplements our social communication

In recent years cities were diagrammatized by the GPS system which could help us to navigate streets, avenues and squares without getting lost. iBus takes this to an important new level; it is not a top-down response rather a bottom-up one : the software not only calculates our journey according to our data, but also tracks our journey through satellite navigation software informing us not only where and when to board which bus, but also where to get off, and how to make our way from there to our final destination. Our journey is something that emerges from selected data. The architecture of the software

making space the real extension of how we lead

stack is the real framing possibility of program for

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making space the real extension of how we lead our contemporary lives; in fact what governs our everyday decisions are dynamic connections rather than static spaces; our cities are not anymore dominated by the space as it was in the middle ages when the city core was represented by the piazza or mercato. In the case of the iPhone, program is less aboutgeographyandmoreaboutopportunity.Bratton points out that the iPhone is not about a new geography of looking at the city, but rather about how we are facing another kind of opportunity for connection. iBus offers us a further dimension to this, and aims to get the simplest solution and provide immediate and clear information about our public transportation needs. Following the logic of ‘Emergence’ iBus is like a virus which can change the city’s DNA; it doesn’t depend on default screens, but explores what the customer is searching for: let’s see what happens , a query makes a solution which differs according to the starting data. It is both meticulously mechanical and broadly dramaturgical, a systematizing of the possibility of particular events appearing, both on schedule and off, and of the scenariosbywhichthoseeventsbecomeresidualsocial languages. It is a geo-computational program, but one that calculates conditions of appearance more than it scripts or contains what finally emerges. The design frameworks are protocols that ensure a predictable malleability of information flow.

stack is the real framing possibility of program for designers. iBus is a way to design the city through an accessible, feasible and sustainable way; cities are the result of connections: iBus, in a very real time, designs those connections. Cities are never the same, they can change according to our destination; cities become flexible flows. The designer role is to design a protocol, a grammar , which can be the base of a navigational system. What is more, by encouraging and promoting more sustainable forms of transportation, such as buses, iBus opens up a new environmentally conscious way of navigating our cities. Let’s play then: Click on iTravel & go with iBus! Laura Ferrarello This article includes quotations from following publications: Benjamin H. Bratton, iPhone City, in ‘Digital Cities’ AD June 2009 Steven Johnson,Emergence: The connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software, London Penguin 2001 p.159

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Profile Corviale facebook Page

Dates: October 2010- December 2010 Location: Southern California Institute of Architecture Design Team: Laura Ferrarello

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“Profile” is a paper-project for the Cultural Study class, instructor Benjamin Bratton. The paper has the form of a facebook chat between two tenants living in Corviale, the 1Km building in the South of Rome designed in 1971 by a team of architects supervised by Mario Fiorentino. Because of the massive dimensions, Corviale facebook page, that I imagined and designed, becomes the space where ‘real’ social interactions between tenants happen. Corviale facebook page is, indeed, the ‘real’ space of social interactions, in place of the physical ones. Hence it follows part of the paper.

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blueprints

Dates: September 2012- October 2012 Location: Los Angeles Design Team: Laura Ferrarello

[In] a debate I had with an architectural historian [I was] inside a flat close to the top of the building. Naturally, he was all for Balfron. You should have seen the beatific expression that suffused his face as he urged me to admire its generous proportions, its clever layout, its wonderful view. I was less certain. Would you like to live here? I asked. He insisted that he would. Then he admitted that he actually lived in a Georgian house in Royal Greenwich1.

The narrative behind most Brutalist buildings is characterized as the quotation above. From an architectural point of view they are considered masterpieces, from public opinion they are urban monsters in need of demolition. Politics’ tendency is keen on accomplishing the latter without taking into consideration either any possible responsibility of administrative failure, and acting accordingly, or giving a voice to those that call those “monsters” home. Indeed, most of these buildings belong to a kind of architectural experimentation directed towards the investigation of new social housing typologies. In order to respond to the “low budget for high density” politics, architects employed low budget, yet flexible materials capable of solving either structural or formal inquiries by taking care of mass production standards. Indeed, architects understood political requirements as an investigation of new possible languages given by new materials. Nevertheless the social environment where these buildings would take place was under local administration control; politics or private investors were in charge of building management. Can architecture be blamed for social behaviors? This open riddle comes as response for the widely preformatted idea that social discontent emerges because of bad taste. Nevertheless history teaches that aesthetic factors are secondary, whereas care is the first2. Any built “masterpiece” needs to be preserved from the decay of time and usage. Pruitt Igoe was a social housing complex which Charles Jencks defined as the “death of Modern Architecture”3 when the whole complex was blown up and the 1 Rachel Cooke, “Inside the homes of our star architects”, in The Guardian 22 September 2012, last modified 22 September 2012, http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2012/sep/23/stirling-prizearchitects-own-homes 2 Poor Notting Hill brick houses exponentially increased their value when the area market rate became one of the most valuable in central London. The concept of ugly and beauty varies according to economic trends; hence it often happens that market establishes aesthetic perceptions more than human sensitivity. 3 Charles Jencks, “The Language of Post-Modern Architecture”, New York: Rizzoli 1977, p. 9

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space was declared cursed and abandoned. Nevertheless when residents were asked to talk about their experience in such a cursed place, the most common answer was “home”4. Similarly in Alison and Peter Smithson’s Robin Hood Gardens in London5 and in Mario Fiorentino’s Corviale in South Rome6 it exists this ambivalence between residents and the others. These buildings represented a social and urban experiment in response of a specific local administration’s requirement. In light of such interwoven and difficult conditions, i.e. dealing with social emergency and bureaucratic constraints, the lack of maintenance and the incomplete construction of the project marked the decline of these buildings and the emergence of social discontent. For instance, Corviale was intended to be an independent community capable of auto-administration, according to the lead architect Mario Fiorentino. In the emergence of social housing Fiorentino was asked by the City of Rome to design low cost apartments for 1,200 people; he thought of a linear city defined by a kilometer long building. Because of the lack of control and organization from the City of Rome, linked to an incomplete construction of primary public services, Corviale became a dangerous place. Other examples are the Hackney and Barbican Centers in London, which for years have been considered the ugly part of South Bank. Because of renovation investments the perception of “ugliness” was flipped to an extent that these centers are now expressions of dynamic cultural life in London. Buildings per se are not responsible for social discontents; local administration may respond to such problems via economic systems capable of funding maintenance, which prevents decay and displeasure. In light of what has been described so far, my proposal consists of triggering local economies by means of “common devices”, such as photographs, that can challenge economic loops in order to fundraise maintenance. In other words by means of a “Processing” script any user can participate on drifting the bad image these buildings have acquired and transforming it into a work of art. My proposal is of course a provocation that uses what is commonly recognized as gallery art to render a different and alter aspect of the real which may trigger the inversion of the negative loop of these cursed buildings. The real may be what one does not expect; this alternative condition may be a system for flipping the negative cycle to a positive one. Indeed, I would like to use the blamed aspect of “ugliness” to detour public opinion from its preformatted idea. The image of architecture becomes a social tool that triggers common discussions and debates. Architecture is a more complex event than its labeled-stylistic appearance. With “blueprints” I would like to move forward one’s aesthetic judgment to the social, economical and political environment where architecture is located.

thresholds

Laura Ferrarello

4 “The Pruitt Igoe Myth” Directed by:  Chad Freidrichs  Produced by:  Chad Freidrichs,  Jaime Freidrichs,  Paul Fehler , Brian Woodman  Script by:  Chad and Jaime Freidrichs  Music by:  Benjamin Balcom  Narrator : Jason Henry  Interviews : Sylvester Brown , Robert Fishman , Joseph Heathcott , Brian King,  Joyce Ladner , Ruby Russell , Valerie Sills , Jacquelyn Williams, 2011 5 Jonathan Glancey, ‘ Is London Robin Hood Gardens a masterpiece?’, in “The Guardian”, last modified 23 July 2009 http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/video/2009/jul/28/robin-hood-gardens-architecture 6 LABnovecento, ‘Abitare a Roma. Documentario sulle perfierie Romane. Corviale’, in YouTube, last modified 4 November 2011 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zsh3EQBAEbM

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Images created via a Processing script, which remaps the pixels of the original photos representing Corviale and Robin Hood Gardens.

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Blossoming

Dates: August 2011- September 2011 Location: Enna, Italy Design Team: Laura Ferrarello Materials: Spray painted fabric with cotton

“Blossoming” is a project for a client who commissioned a hanging work for interior. The process is a sequence of lacing and spray painting. As the commission intended to celebrate a happy event, I give my work an aesthetic sense of ‘rebirth’.

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Partire, Lasciare, Ricordare

Dates: March 2013 Location: Los Angeles Design Team: Laura Ferrarello

Partire, Lasciare Ricordare" are hybrid images between photography and digital image. I first took the picture, which has been painted with a computer programme. The subject of my work is the Italian diaspora; the verb at the infinite of the title gives the extent of a never ending wait for something to happen, while thinking on the past, i.e. one's personal memories. The reference I took is Umberto Boccioni's "Quelli che partono. Stati d'Animo" and "Quelli che restano".

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Detail of the ZBrushed frame for the exhibition “BorderBody, Mixing Cities and Identities”, Poland October 2013

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Peack&Poly. An urban place for Downtown LA Sci-Arc Spring Show 2011

Dates: January 2011- April 2011 Location: Los Angeles Design Team: Laura Ferrarello Robbie Crabtree

Quod quoniam constat, nimirum nulla quies est reddita corporibus primis per inane profundum, sed magis assiduo varioque exercita motu partim intervallis magnis confulta resultant, pars etiam brevibus spatiis vexantur ab ictu. Lucrezio, De Rerum Naturae Peack & Poly is a project based on feedbacks. By using patters generated by Rhinoscript we explored how new formal

outcomes emerge once the 2 dimensional script interacts with modeled surfaces.

Thereby the design process has been coordinated

by the costrains that either the script and the surface

face once they come to be a hotel, a theatre and retail. As designers our role was to control the process and address the studio requirements but by triggering new formal territories

within the combination of modeling and scritping field. Both scripts are surface ruled.

Peacock is generated by the iterative repetion of one mesh according to attractors that influence its scale and colors.

Poly is a crystalline volume made of exagons

whose volume is modeled by cutting surfaces when they intersect the original volume. The pattern is generated by the cuts

between these surfaces and the crystalline volume,

whereas colors are generated by external attractors.

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Site plan. Retail with the hotel lobby and theatre.

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Elevation and perspective view of the project.

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Peack and Poly is a mix function project. The tower is a boutique hotel detached from the theatre, which both seat on the public space/ landscape provided of other retail stores.

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Close up view and detail of Peack’s scripted skin

Scripting code of Peack’s skin

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3D printed model in color. The texture is scripted with Rhinoscript

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peacock surface

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Lollypop Wall

Dates: July 2013- August 2013 Location: Enna, Italy Design Team: Laura Ferrarello

Lollypop Wall is an interior decoration for an apartment in Italy. By accomplishing the clientâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s desire of adding colours to a predominant white space, I designed a pattern

made of a series of point whose rhythm and colours wrap the dwelling space by folding through the ceiling and the walls.

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Handy Bag

Dates: August 2011- September 2011 Location: Enna, Italy Design Team: Laura Ferrarello Materials: Black plastic

“Handy Bag” is designed to be easily hold in your hand. The prototype is in black

plastic. The production is based on a Rhino digital model, which has been laser cut and plastered, to smooth the shape, and then ‘painted’ with a liquid black plastic.

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ZBrush color tests

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Foam mold

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Plastered foam mold

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Black plastic Handy Bag

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Drawings

Dates: 2005- 2012 Design Team: Laura Ferrarello

This section collects different series of flat images, which I use as a form of technique investigation. Free hand drawings, iPad or iPhone apps, Zbrush documents produce

different kinds of effects, in terms of composition and colorations. Material quality and colours vary according to the employed tool. Some drawings are driven by coloration investigation, others by composition.

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ArtStudio. iPhone App

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ZBrush

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ZBrush

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ZBrush

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ZBrush

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Oil colors and water on fabric

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iPad App

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iPad App

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ArtSudio, iPhone App

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techniques Stream of consciousness, 2011 Free Hand drawing

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Territorio, 2005 Free hand drawing

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Mare 2005 Free hand drawing

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â&#x20AC;&#x153;forecasting water liliesâ&#x20AC;? art competition for Shantou University Library China

Dates: June 2011- July 2011 Location: Shantou University Library, China Design Team: Laura Ferrarello

32 x 28 x 18 cm thermoplastic water lilies painted with special colors that change with the variation of atmospheric temperature. Lilies are connected with lastic pipes filled with fluorescent powder in water.

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“The superior man is harmonious and open-minded. The inferior man follows the crowd, but is not in harmony.”  Verse 23 of Chapter 13, Analects of Confucius

Climate is one of the most sublime events that our single existence has to daily cope with. Although it can be predicted, climate leaves us disarmed and powerless because of its power. We can simply accomplish, follow its roles and try to negotiate its changes. Forecasting Water Lilies translates and interprets Confucius’s sentence by referring to climate’s sublime power on human being. Indeed climate, as part of the harmonic natural system, makes us weak and inferior. We cannot cope with nature, as recent events in Japan or America told us. We are unarmed. Thereby Forecasting Water Lilies render the human being’s weakness in front of nature, through a cartoonish aesthetic. Each forecasting water lily is linked to a plastic pink network, which is underneath the water, so that water lilies are all connected. Three trunks are at the very bottom filled with water, whereas the branches that reach the lilies floats. This network is designed by using a code. Despite its messy appearance, there is a precise algorithm that controls the position of each water lily. Lilies are made of rubber that has thermoplastic properties, i.e. it changes shape according to the external temperature. Lilies are also equipped of plastic pipes filled with water. According to Galileo Galilei’s interconnecting pipes, the external change of atmospheric pressure ap-

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plies an orthogonal force that makes lilies move up or down. As lilies are bonded to each other, once one moves, the others are affected accordingly. In the thermoplastic rubber there is embedded a special colour that makes lilies change colour according to the external temperature. Thereby Forecasting Water Lilies can foretell the weather. Lilies follow the harmonic law of climate. I interpreted Confucius’ sentence by combining a personal experience and a ‘universal’ one. When I went to China I visited the Summer Palace and Lijiang. I was left bewitched by the beautiful lilies floating on the water. Those flowers fully captured my attention to such an extent lilies are one of the strongest memory I’ve been keeping in my mind. When I gave a look at the competition pictures and I saw the water surrounding the library, my mind traveled to my Summer Palace and Lijiang ‘lily memory’. To some extent this project is my memory of China. I gave a cartoonish aesthetic to Forecasting Water Lilies as I wanted to make library users reflect by means of local images. Because of the different aesthetic, the local become vehicle of a specific message. My message is related to the unacknowledged weakness contemporary society is defined by. We all enjoy and have fun with our technology, by ignoring that we belong to a ‘superior system’ that controls us. Lilies are nice and colourful, but they are trapped in the funny pink network that applies the climate’s laws. If one lily moves, the others have to move accordingly. If temperature changes, lilies change their shape and colours. Lilies are my interpretation of Confucius’ statement related to contemporary society.

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18cm

32cm 28 cm

Forecasting Water Lilies are made of casted thermoplastic molds . Lilies are connected to plastic pipes that make them move up and down according to the external atmospheric pressure. The process is based on Galileo Galileiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s interconnective pipes and it works as the bicycle pump.

Detail of the connection between the water lily and the plastic floating branch

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Pipe materials 10 cm

22 cm

Once the force applied by the external pressure moves one lily, they all move because of the stiff plastic branches that link them which touch its neighbours

Thermoplastic is a specific type of plastic that changes form according to the external temperature. Moreover in the plastic there is a special colour that decreases when the temperature change. Therefore water lilies change colour according to the external temperature. The process is reversible.

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Thermoplastic http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/te chtalk51-10.pdft

Branch material. PVC 0,15 cm high Plastic that changes colors with temperature http://www.aedoto.com/sito_storico/ita/inspiration/materi al/mat_01.html

PHOTOS / GKSS RESEARCH CENTER 2006

The series above shows the triple-shape effect of a tube prepared from a polymer network, CL(50)EG. Starting at 20 degrees Celsius (a), the tube has an upright diameter of 4.5 mm; when heated to 40 degrees, it switches to a second programmed shape (b) with a diameter of 6.9 mm, and then to its permanent shape (c) with a diameter of 5.8 mm, when heated to 60 degrees. In both series, above and left, the material CL(50)EG used to produce the demonstration object is a two-phase polymer network consisting of 50 percent poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) by weight and 50 percent poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL) by weight.

Trunk material. Dimension each 10 x 5 cm / 20 x 5 cm

Cosmic rays emerge from supernova remnants

MIT astronomers and a colleague have created an xtraordinarily detailed image of the remains of an xploded star that provides new clues about the origins f cosmic rays, mysterious high-energy particles that

Using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, the scien sts mapped the rate of acceleration of cosmic ray elec ons in a remnant of an exploded star, or supernova. he new map, the first of its kind, shows that the elec ons are being accelerated at close to the theoretical maximum rate. This is compelling evidence that cosmic

The map was created from an image of Cassiopeia A, 325-year-old supernova remnant. Blue, wispy arcs in he image trace the expanding outer shock wave where he acceleration takes place. The other colors in the mage show debris from the explosion that has been

black holes, he said. Scientists had previously developed a theory to explain how charged particles can be accelerated to extremely high energies—traveling at almost the speed of light—by bouncing back and forth across a shock wave many times. “The electrons pick up speed each time they bounce across the shock front, like they’re in a relativistic pin ball machine,” said team member Glenn Allen, a Kavli research scientist. “The magnetic fields are like the bumpers, and the shock is like a flipper.” In their analysis of the huge data set, the team was able to separate the X-rays coming from the accelerat ing electrons from those coming from the heated stellar debris. “It’s exciting to see regions where the glow produced by cosmic rays actually outshines the 10-million-degree gas heated by the supernova’s shock waves,” said John

1 5 cm

Detail of the trunk section. Connection with the branches and the artificial lake wall. 2 2

2 1

1 1

The three main trunks of plastic pipes, that link lilies altoghether and connect them to the perimeter of the small artificial lake, are full of water to keep them at the bottom. In the water there is a fluorescent powder to make the pipes blow during the day and night.

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The Hortus Conclusus The exhibition space and library for the illuminated manuscripts

Dates: September 2010- December 2010 Location: Graz, Austria Southern California Institute of Architecture Design Team: Laura Ferrarello In 1798 Antonio Canova has been commissioned by Albert of Saxony the Mary Christine of Austria’s grave. Canova sculptured a pyramid volume and five statues, a winged funerary genius, a lion, an old man, a maiden, a woman that holds the ash box and two other little girls. These statues are part of a specific scene, i.e. a procession towards the central, dark and mysterious entrance, i.e. the threshold between the living and the death world. According to the Italian historian Carlo Giulio Argan, this black entrance is the key and central element that organises the whole design composition. The sharp contrast between the brightness and darkness, given by materials, the mass, the characters’ cloth pleats and characters’ body torsion enhances the symbolism of processional walk towards the black and mysterious entrance. Canova has been capable of depicting the passage between life and death, i.e. the cielnt’s requirements, through interpreting materials, volumetric masses and the context itself. The Hortus Conclusus building explores and challenges, within an architectural discourse, Canova’s process. The dichotomy is a recursive element that takes shape in the porject at different levels. The illuminated manuscript exhibition needs controlled lighting spaces as well as fax simile needs bright ones. The library needs silence as well as the bar has to be noisy. The interior is dethatched from the exterior by an envelope that reintepreted the surrounding facades and encloses a Piranesian volumetric space wherein my programme takes place. The corner, in its traditional role as solid element, disappears, widens up and links the perspective view from the square to the side street and from the side street towards the square. It becomes a transition moment that makes both the context, by its perspective views, and the building interiors clash by means of its own representation. The corner turns to be the most intense experience, in terms of perceiving the relationship between the context and the building. Exhibition visitors and library users can only access the Hortus Conclusus building through the basement. From the side street porticato they take a stair that brings them down to the basement carved in the ground. Whether the entrance is placed at the corner and appears to be quite dark, beyond any expectation, the basement is a bright space because of the glass ceiling that recalls the Viennese café. Therefore visitors can experience the whole building interior section while sitting in the bar and taking a coffee with a Sacher cake. This interior cave-like drives visitors’ sight towards the sky which is framed by a layer of glass concrete. At the basement the Illuminated Manuscript experience begins. Here the dichotomy is expressed by the constrain elements requested by the programme. While ‘climbing’ and ‘discovering’ the building the darkness turns into brightness. From the basement to the roof, dark spaces gradually become brighter and brighter. The light variation marks not only the differentiation of functions but also the level of contact with the exterior, so that the

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Antonio Canovaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s tombal monument for Maria Cristina of Austria. Detail of the pleated dress I used as reference for my project

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Section A-Aâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;

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“Hortus Conclusus” model.

SITE PLAN

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1. Illuminated Manuscript Exhibition 4. Fax Simile Exhibition

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A’

B’

1. ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT EXHIBITION 2. BAR 3. BOOKSHOP 4. FAX SIMILE EXHIBITION

building gets visually ‘painted’ of light according to the level and the functions. Therefore visitors pass through bright and dark spaces, i.e original and fax simile exhibition, by a Piraneasian system that keeps them in touch with framed elements of the context. The library concludes this ‘procession’. It is located at the higher level in the building, therefore, at the opposite of the basement. The library is entirely wrapped by the external envelope. There is not any direct communication with the exterior. The natural light comes from the roof and from the interior lateral openings that can offer screenshot views of the interior space. Whether from the basement the interior views are ruled by orthogonal axes, in the library there is not any established direction. The Hortus Conclusus creates a macro urban environment that divides and joins the building from the context at the same time. This building challenges the way a space can be perceived and experienced by taking care of the interior and the exterior at the same time. By applying transparent materials mixed with opaque ones, and by thinking openings as frames that links and divides the interior with the exterior, the experience of walking through the space takes on unexpected results that aim to define exterior/interiors and interiors/exteriors.

Laura Ferrarello November 2010

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Interior of the cafeteria with the waffle ceiling looking at the interior/exterior spae of the library.

Interior of the Fax Simile Exhibition room. Projection of the image on the interior walls

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S p a c e

i n

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t h e s t o r y o f t h e a n c i e n t t r a v e l e r

Dates: January 2008- June 2008 Location: Marseille, France Design Team: Laura Ferrarello What is Marseille? Walking in the sun, I felt the power of this city: the very close connection between it and the sea. This connection is continuously transforming into different aspects.

Space and Time is the title of my MA Design research; it investigates architecture, i.e. space, through time. What I pursued through this work is an alienated way of looking at the space that surrounds us moving through variable speeds, i.e. time. The result I ended to is the perception of a framed space, like photograph shots, enriched by different details which feed a continuous feeling of discovering space in the alienated walking flaneur. This idea popped me up since I started to analyse the South France city of Marseille through its Underwater Archaeological Department. The ancient goods lost underneath the sea during the past ages and the contemporary research based on those goods made me wonder about the meaning of time when it is not anymore a linear sequence of events. These immaterial connections Marseille is able to develop merged into my free hand drawings. These latter were my visual devices I used to build a visual language which could be as strong as the words of one of the most important Marseille writer: Jean Claude Izzo. The colours of the sky and the sea, the bright raylights and the different levels upon which Marseille is layered onto became my words and my sentences for my story about Marseille. I wrote a story, a play,The Ancient Traveler, set up in this city and my design work became the theatre wherein this play is performed. Marseille was my scenario, coversely my design its mimetic representation. In order to challenge my imagination I used as visual tool pieces of cut paper, cut-outs. These became my own theatrical scenes whose narrative follow my play so that my visual scenario can join my story; one enrichs of details the other. The 3 Stages Theatre is a floating stage accessible only by boat @ Le Petit Port where framed and different details of Marseille perform. 3 Stages because theThe Ancient Traveler plot is divided into three acts and the audience has to move as well as actors in order to be involved in my story. I took as references the Expressionist theatre, the Literature Nobel Prize Luigi Pirandelloâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Six Characters in Search of an Author play and Bertolt Brechtâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Waiting for Godot. Time is a spiral; it is relative, there is no start, there is no end. This is my image of Marseille.

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Performances moving through the 3Stages Theatre.

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3 Stage Theatre at Le Petit Port

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3 Stage Theatre at UnitĂŠ dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Habitation

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3 Stage Theatre at Le Petit Port, Marseille.

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3 Stage Theatre Scenarios.

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take your own time

Dates: June 2011- July 2008 Location: Pacific Design Center, Los Angeles Design Team: Laura Ferrarello Joanna Cheung (video) Gabriel Noguez (video)

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The City Of Music @ Lombardia Castle Enna, Italy Graduation Thesis. Awarded with the Rotary Award. Best thesis 2007

Dates: September 2005- April 2006 Location: Enna, Italy Design Team: Laura Ferrarello

Enna is a famous city because of all the ancient Greek and Roman poets who wrote about it during the past ages. Placed at the center of Sicily this city still preserves those memories of those mythic events whose main location was the area nowadays called Lombardia. The City of Music I designed in this space pursues to be the heir of those memories; this architecture transcripts and interprets this message. The City of Music achievement is to become a mirror wherein the ancient Enna looks at itself in its modern clothes; the fragmented elements that make up my project are this mirror. Their design has been tested through different diagrams whose final one is the best which hierarchies the empty space of the castle. This empty space is the element I took as reference because I recognised it the mediator role in the relationship between my design and the context; this empty space underlines their identities. The audience is continuosly involved by this space; it is part of this metaphysics atmosphere to such an extent that shadows partake of this context; they mould my design as well as the castle through the contrast between lights and darkness. In this way The City of Music is a single system which camouflages its aspect according to the intensity or absence of raylights. The castle is divided into three courtyards; each of those hosts the museum of the city of Enna, a small theatre, a lyric one and a bar/restaurant area. Outside there is the Conservatory whose functions are divided into four different buildings: the reception; the administration offices; the teaching rooms and the Auditorium.

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Bird view of the project in the castle (up). View of the museum from the small theatre ramp.

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Compositional exercises to understand the space of the castle. Towers in black and design proposals in red. Site plan and section of the project (down)

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Section and plan of the conservatory and view of the small theatre stage

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Cartoline da Ischia (Greetings from Ischia) Installation for Expressioni 2007

Dates: June 2007- August 2007 Location: Ischia, NA Design Team: Laura Ferrarello

Cartoline da Ischia renders different views of the same reality, a Futurist box in 3D dimensions. Cartoline (postcards) because the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;cut outâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; parts frame different details of the context. In the exhibition I invited visitors to interact with my istallation to be part of these customizable postcards.

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Social Housing, Mestre Venice PhD Workshop

Dates: January 2008- April 2008 Location: Mestre, Italy Design Team: Laura Ferrarello

This project takes as references the venetian campi (campo Santo Stefano- campo Santa Margherita) for the plan design while Carlo Scarpaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Brion Cemetery as scenario for this not - yet urban area nearby Mestre.

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Site plan.

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Perspective view

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Typical floorplan of the linear block

Typical floorplan of the tower

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One bedroom apartment

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wo bedroom, two bathroom apartment

Two bedroom apartment

Plans of the complex

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View for the parking lot to the lienear block basement

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View of the public ‘interior’ space of the linear block

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Narrow and dark â&#x20AC;&#x153;sottoporteghiâ&#x20AC;? , character of Venice

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View from ground floor

graphic design

Elena Manferdini, “The Domain of Drawings” Monograph

Dates: August 2011- January 2013 Location: Los Angeles My role: Graphic designer

“La Geometria come Strumento di Invenzione” PhD Thesis, IUAV University of Venice

Dates: October 2006- February 2010 Location: Venezia Content: Thesis Book Graphic Design 18x21 cm

“La Poetica del Ritmo” Bruno Zevi Award thesis partecipant

Dates: May 2012- July 2012 Location: Rome Content: Thesis Book Graphic Design

â&#x20AC;&#x153;(im)material processâ&#x20AC;? 2008 Beijing Architectural Biennale Catalogue

Dates: June 2008- October 2008 Curators: Neil Leach Xu Wei Guo Location: Beijing My role: Graphic Designer

â&#x20AC;&#x153;MA Architectural and Urban Studiesâ&#x20AC;? Book design during my MA at Brighton University

Dates: September 2007- February 2009 Location: Brighton UK My role: Graphic Designer

“La Città della Musica nel Castello di Lombardia Enna” Book design for my Undergraduate Thesis at the University of Rome

Dates: September 2005- April 2006 Location: Roma Content: Graphic Design

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La Geometria Come strumento di Invenzione. Il concorso del Palazzo del Littorio dei 7 di â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Quadranteâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Architectural Design PhD Thesis

Dates: 2006- 2010 IUAV University of Venice Supervisors: Professor Luciano Semerani IUAV Professor Antonio Monestiroli Polytechnic of Milan Professor Franco Purini, University of Rome Student: Laura Ferrarello

Banfi, Belgiojoso, Danusso, Figini, Peressutti, Pollini and Rogers, 1934 Palazzo del Littorio Competition. Ground and 1st level plan.

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Italiani, Un popolo di poeti, di artisti, di eroi, di santi, di pensatori, di scienziati, di navigatori, di transmigratori This quotation, engraved on the top of the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome, can be defined as a manifesto whereas it describes the role of architecture in the relationship between Fascism and the masses. Indeed this manifesto depicts the message Mussolini wanted to persuade his Nation so that he could be recognized as its undisputed and mythical leader. Mussolini wanted Italians to believe that they were the heirs of the ancient Roman Emperors. In order to achieve it, the Fascist leader needed to create a precise narrative mainly defined by two words: universal and mythical. ‘Geometry as Invention Tool. The Palazzo del Littorio Competition designed by the ‘Quadrante’ group of 7’ is the title of my PhD thesis which explores this interwoven relationship, by analysing the 1934 Palazzo del Littorio Competition designed by Banfi, Belgiojoso, Danusso, Figini, Peressutti, Pollini and Rogers. Indeed in my thesis its design process has been analysed according to the so cial, political and artistic Italian context in order to understand and identify the signification of the word universal, pointed out by the competition call, employed in architecture to represent Fascism. What was the role that Fascist architects played with their regime? Which was their relationship with their society?

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During Modernism artists focused their visual research on seeking precise values capable of rendering specific, mythic and dogmatic orders. Since the avantgarde destroyed XIX century dogmas, Modernism searched for a new one. What could be this unquestioned order? What is the modernist way to relate human beings with nature? What could be the system capable of creating a mutual relationship between these two? Grids became the order that Modernist artists were looking for. They represented both a way to look at nature and to translate it in a structured hierarchy.

Monument as memory of the past. Plans reflect this concept in the composiion of the functions

The area of the competition and the Fori Imperiali with the Colusseum (left). The module of the project

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As a system to establish hierarchy in the spatial void, grids linked human being with a higher universal order that, in political terms, became Fascism. Driven therefore by these ideals, geometry took on the role of exploring reality by means of a different point of view. Modernist architects hired the 90° geometry as dogma to represent their ideas. The Monge’s Orthogonal Projections became the codified effect of such ideas. By means of representation a theoretical ideal translated in forms the relationship between man and nature. In Italy this visual invention has been fused with the arise of Fascism. For Fascists it came to be the way to ‘build’ Italian identity, whereas for architects it was thought as the symbol of the new born Italy. This ‘common agreement’ entailed two different ways of looking at the image of architecture, as the Littorio Competition points out. My thesis tracks this specific context of Italian Modernism. My analysis of 1933 Figini & Pollini’s Artist Villa, 1934 Palazzo del Littorio Competition, 1935 Figini, Pollini, Lingeri & Terragni’s Fine Arts School in Brera and 1937 Figini & Pollini’s Armed Forces Competition points out this unconventional and innovative way of designing architecture which was a process of form finding according to what architects thought to be the needs of contemporary society.

Volumetric plan, section and perspective view of the Palazzo del Littorio project designed by Banfi, Belgiojoso, Danusso, Figini, Peressutti, Pollini, Rogers

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The Fibonacciâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sequence in the Palazzo del Littorio project plan.

writings The geometrical process of the plan.

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The design process of the elevation and cross section based on the rythm of geometry.

Diagramtic redesign (up) and geometrical analysis (bottom) of Mario Radiceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s painting, 1935.

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The design process of the Palazzo del Littorio elevations and sections.

Project for the Fine Art School of Brera, 1935, architects. Luigi Figini, Pietro Lingeri, Gino Pollini, Giuseppe Terragni. Geometry of the plan and elevation.

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Armed Forced Pavilion Competition, 1937-38. Architects Luigi Figini, Gino Pollini. Ground plan and the rhythm of the structural grid. Section and elevation. The elevations are based on the golden section.

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Armed Forced Pavilions Competition, 1937-38. Architects Luigi Figini, Gino Pollini. Navy pavilion elevation detail

Armed Forced Pavilion Competition, 1937-38. Rhythmic intersection of the pavilionsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; structural grid and the piazzaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s one. Elevation of the Navy pavilion

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Published in: http://www.ultimathule.com.au/index.php/ultima/article/view/13/6

Back to Reality.

Architecture and the World of Fantasy For many years now (although it's if it began yesterday) an efficient housemaid takes care of my art. She is called Fantasy. Sometimes she teases and mocks me. If she likes wearing black, no one will argue that isoften quite odd, and no one will believe that she always acts seriously and in her own way. She puts her hands in her pockets. She takes a cap with bells. She wears it and, red as a rooster crest, runs away. Today she is here. Tomorrow she will be there. She has fun on bringing me home, so that I can write novels, fictions, comedies about the most discontent people in the world. Men, women teenagers wrapped in the oddest stories where they can’t find their way out. These people are unsatisfied with their plans. They are cheated from their hopes. These are people with whom it is quite often 1 painful to deal with.

The Nobel Prize playwright Luigi Pirandello introduces his 1921 play, Six Characters in Search of an Author, by describing who triggers his ideas: fantasy. Fantasy is, indeed, depicted as an efficient housemaid 2

that cannot be controlled. Not only does she make jokes at the expense of Pirandello himself, but contrives to situate the playwright in odd situations, that become effective catalysts for creating the characters in his stories. According to Pirandello fantasy is the trigger that, by making jokes of the author, provokes, at the same time, new stories because of the odd situations she is capable of ‘making up’. You cannot foretell her behaviour, you have to simply follow her way. In the extent that Pirandello describes fantasy, it emerges a continuous element capable of joining the author himself with the characters of his novels. This continuous element is reality, i.e. the environment wherein the playwright lives. Nevertheless the link between the author and his environment is fantasy which, therefore, becomes a medium. In other words for Pirandello fantasy is the translator of realities. She plays the role of interface. She is the medium whereby the author can see unforeseen scenarios and project them towards his public. Fantasy can switch the point of view of both viewers, who experience these new scenarios spread out from the author's mind, and authors themselves, who think, write or design these scenarios. When considered from this point of view, fantasy becomes one of the most important and powerful elements in the world of ideas.

Thinkers employ her to challenge new territories.

Within the domain of the real, which is kept by the author as

Luigi Pirandello, Sei personaggi in cerca d’autore, Biblioteca Nazionale Rizzoli, Milano

1993, p. 5.

She is used according to Pirandello’s description of fantasy itself, as a real person with

an independent identity. For Pirandello fantasy is provided of her own personality, to such an extent that he talks about her as someone existing in the real world.

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reference, fantasy is capable of coordinating, by means of her ungraspable and unforeseen role, realities that become inventions for authors themselves, i.e. new realities. On the other hand, once fantasy bookmarks the course of the real, the real itself takes a new unforeseen aspect. Make it new is the motto Sci-arc director Eric Owen Moss encourages his students to employ on thinking architecture. Architecture is, therefore, looked at, thought about and invented under the supervision of fantasy, enabling surroundings to be observed by different and unexpected perspectives, keeping as a target the ‘making’ of new urban scenarios by the agency of architecture itself. Within this field, architecture can modify our surrounding reality, either considered from the designers’ perspective – at first – or by that of the viewer - later on. This ‘two-step process’ can happen when fantasy is used as a continuous and uninterrupted vehicle from both designers and viewers. Fantasy per se doesn't behave as continuous though. Despite of this designers' create narratives to be told. Clients, or viewers, experience these narratives in their own individual and collective perspective. Although architecture is the same object from an aesthetic point of view, the way it is experienced changes

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according to the interpreter. In other words those that experience architecture perceive not the aesthetic but the narrative told by their 3

own fantasy . Nevertheless, whether her presence is (dis)continuous and difficult to grasp, fantasy is in any case a necessary, dynamic, transitory and chameleon-like entity within the design process and its mode of public communication. Naureen Meyer's Sci_arc thesis project, The Cosmetic Limit, is an example. Indeed, in her project, fantasy mediates two different conditions related to the same object: one is the Gordon Kaufman’s façade of the original Los Angeles Times in Downtown, the other is its image with applied different 'make-up operations' on its facade. The object is the LA Times building. The core idea of this thesis is defined by the threshold constituted by the original scenario, i.e. the LA Times building in Downtown, and the effects triggered by the make-up operations. As in both cases the building is placed in the same context, which is the identity that defines the place when the object modifies its aspect?

“This is what Lancan has in his mind when he claims that the very distortion and/or

dissimulation is revealing: what emerges via the distortions of the accurate representation of reality is the real; i.e. the trauma around which social reality is structured”. Sanford Kwinter, Far From Equilibrium. Essay on technology and Design Culture, Cynthia C. Davidson (ed), Barcelona New York: Actar 2007, p. 245

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Which are, therefore, the consequences of this operation? Hence fantasy's role comes as interface between these two scenarios. The keystone whereby these questions can be addressed is not the building per se but the perception of the building by its viewers. The make-up operations that Meyer applies to the LA Times building seem actions most likely directed to the public, or better to the public's perception of space. Indeed the overall design operation has to be experienced from the fantastic interpretation that the public opinion has when the two images are compared. Within this threshold of comparison, therefore, the unforeseen and ungrasped power of fantasy establishes the link between these two views. Hence it comes the point. By pointing out the superfluous degree that cosmetic entails, to such an extent that it can modify the identity of an object, in a first instance Meyer enhances this ephemeral condition that, however, can re-establish and enforcing the LA Times position in its context. Nevertheless these cosmetic operations determinates an intrinsic 4

essence with the original facade that, paradoxically, reinforces and further redefines the identity of that context, by going beyond the cosmetic operation per se. In a second instance, and here it is the riddle of the thesis, once established the intrinsic essence Meyer flips again the condition of her project by enhancing the limit of this effect. Fantasy triggered and established a new identity for the building and its place by means of the relationship between the original image and its make-up one. Nevertheless what is the limit of this operation? Are spaces superficial perception of images or cohabitation places for a community? Hence fantasy plays the role of interface for helping people on flipping their view and interpretation of the same space, by means of her ungraspable attitude. As for Pirandello fantasy is employed to communicate his audience the gaps of reality, in this case it occurs the same: firstly she enhances the power of cosmetic and, later on, she points out the ‘cosmetic limits’ in a urban territory. Therefore fantasy guides the audience towards a critique of contemporary architecture by a paradoxical process of flipped realities.

Naureen Meyer, The Cosmetic Limit, in Graduate Thesis Project, Los Angeles:

Sci_arc Press, p. 111

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Naureen Meyer, The Cosm etic Lim it, SCI-Arc Graduate Thesis 2010, Supervisor Andrew Zago

Despite of what has been described so far and given her elusive disposition, how can fantasy achieve such powerful and key position in the process of design? How can it be described the nature of the relationship that links architecture and fantasy, when architecture itself

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consistently seeks rigorous organisational processes in the delivery of ideas? How can this dichotomy exist above all in contemporary society, which fosters the research of new systems, based on new technologies, capable of controlling the process of production in accordance with contemporary standards? Within this scenario the unforeseen impetus of fantasy seems out of the place. Ungraspable and irrepressible fantasy seems a foreigner in a catalogue-like society which, by means of digital devices addressed to rank and classify social habits for production' sake, seeks out universal structure so that 5

a single, globalised, community can unfold . Nevertheless fantasy is

Since the definition of modern society, which came when urban life prevailed

countryside’s because of the leadership established by economy as social system, the dichotomy with community emerged. The affirmation of the individual as an autonomous person capable of satisfying his/her needs entailed a kind of production not merely addressed to him/herself only, but to his/her social environment, i.e. society. Indeed according to Adam Smith individual’s actions for self satisfactions can be transformed into social goods. Hence the concept of society. Nevertheless society is characterised by small aggregations wherein individuals interact with others. These groups are the simplified version of society itself whose morphology, because of the modified economic dynamic and because of the articulation of the work’ social organization, can offer accurate social dimension that is called collective consciousness. To this extent these groups are the fundamental matrix for collective relationships. Society is, therefore, a phenomenon characterised by community whose components are those that have something to share. Indeed the social order has to be found in the everyday life, i.e. in

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increasingly present in our daily life, more-so than before. To some 6

extent fantasy is becoming the way we experience our alter realities that are a reflection of real ‘realities’ themselves. Ungraspable fantasy has turned out to be the everyday habit for dwelling in our cities. In which terms fantasy interface society with reality? How is this contemporary phenomenon related to the domain of ideas that characterise architecture? Gaming everyday life According to research firm Gartner, 50% of companies that manage innovation and research will use gamification - the use of game-play 7

mechanics for practical applications - by 2015 . By examining the way we live, we work, we spend our spare time, we can identify a system that creates what I shall call the ‘hyperlink society'. The 'hyperlink society' is based upon the interactive way we experience the ‘real world’ by means of interfaces such as iPhone, Android, Blackberry, GPS, Twitter, Facebook.

In other words we

experience our surroundings by means of hyperlinks that we copy and paste from one device to another in order to deliver specific tasks. These operations happen in real time and they are constantly updated according to the context's conditions. Thereby these hyperlinks are, to some extent, roads, or better, infrastructure, whereby we move and interact with the surrounding. Rather than directly acting in the real world with our body, digital hyperlinks locate us in virtual spaces and, generally, quantify for us the necessary time for delivering ordinary actions. Thereby we are anytime connected with 'real' reality. There is a detail though: this reality is experienced by looking, touching and panning one LCD screen. Space becomes the projection of a thought, shaped in our mind but reflected by one hyperlink which contains all the data taken from the real. In other words, by means of hyperlinks, reality gets the dimension of the screen where we scroll and pan

the community’s life, and the order itself is agreed by everybody. This kind of social

associations produces social power that can spread out by means of shared bonds. To some extent community and society are two contrasting models of aggregation which

define themselves as ‘ideal types’. Nevertheless they enhance the complex characters of human aggregations. According to H. Schmalebach the Bund constitutes the bond that develops through communities with the establishment of brotherhood. This brotherhood witnesses the autonomous decision of individuals to take part of a certain group. Franco Ferrarotti, Società, Milano: Oscar Mondadori, 1980. 6

Altĕr, ĕra, ĕrum, the other, one of the two. Alter includes both terms of comparison. By

referring to one, the other is already included. There is not exclusion. 7

Katia Moskvitch, Gamification time: What if everything were just a game? ,in BBC News Technology, 20 June

2011 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13749897) June 2011.

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spaces. Accordingly, as a consequence of 'hyperlink culture', society has developed a more performative method for creating scenarios. The growing presence of smart phones entailed and triggered a process focussed on increasing the familiarity with the virtual from the public opinion, to such an extent that the concept of virtual per se changed. Indeed, whether in the past it was related to an entity 8

without form , i.e. something you can't imagine, nowadays it seems that for the main public the virtual achieved a better understanding 9

than the real itself . Online banking, new friendships, work networking, TV shows, online shopping and many other daily and ordinary actions migrated to the realm of the virtual. In which way could familiarity be increased? The system that indexes our actions in the web follows a specific logic close to video game's one. To some extent we explore web pages by passing through increased difficulty levels, wherein our data are inserted, in order to achieve our bank statement, for instance. Along our way we prepare ourselves for facing obstacles that can make difficult our way to the end. This is how our mind processes the 10

online navigation, because of the architecture web pages' index . Accordingly the same process is repeated for other ordinary actions. What does this web system entail? Web architecture relies on the user's fantasy. This is literally the trigger of familiarity as it can borrow

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already established processes that people's mind are used to employ in video game realities. Therefore what matters is the way user perceives and experience the web page. In this extent fantasy is the trigger that makes the way for us through the realm of the virtual, thus rendering the virtual itself familiar, i.e. product of our individual and 11

unique fantasy . These devices play on rendering individual services

Virtual, adj, having the essence or effect but not the appearance or form of.

http://dictionary.reference.com (August 2011)

On this see Third of adults 'use smartphone' says Ofcom report, in BBC News Technology 3 August 2011

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14397101 (August 2011) 10 Like children learning a new skill, we learn by gaming how to strategize and modulate bodily gestures with environmental spaces, to control nearness and remoteness at once, both as individual passengers of the city and as social groups in emergence. We learned to point & click, to touch & pinch, and are learning to wave & poke. The richness of this appears in the details. Benjamin Bratton, iPhone City, in Texts. Bratton.info. http://bratton.info/projects/texts/iphone-city/ (August 2011) 11 An example is Chromaroma. This project is based on the London Public

Transportation System. By using the Oyster card, i.e. the public transportation card for London, Londoners navigate the tube by exploring it as a video game. Indeed every

time users take the bus or the tube, there are points to be collected. At the same time, by taking the data of your city trips, Chromaroma web page suggests the best route for you and updates traffic info in real time. On the other hand the TFL (Transports for London) uses these data to understand the weight of traffic in London. In Chromaroma home page there is, in fact, the top list of London tube and bus stations. Users have also their Social Network where they exchange info with other users. http://www.chromaroma.com/ (August 2011). When the logic of video games is

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because of the exploitation of our fantasy, that becomes nothing else 12

than a mechanism . Therefore virtual realties, such as video games, social networks, augmented reality and 3D movies, are making us part of everyday life by using as interfaces our expectations and fantasies. To some extent we are currently capable of constructing a customised reality, one that is defined by our own fantasy. On the other hand fantasy has not changed her ungraspable condition, as the ungraspable per se becomes the way we measure our activities. Real time is, of course, the temporal condition that we employ for the majority of our ordinary activities. Yet it is also the time measure created by the dynamic and unforeseen domain of fantasy. Paradoxically however Fantasy is free of time and space, it occurs without control. But as our economic system is currently focussed towards satisfying people’s personal fantasies, in order to be capable of selling and producing new products, there is the necessity to capture through fabricating, 3d printing and virtually creating brand new fantasies as they emerge from the imagination. At the end of the day, we all like to have fun - and in our digital and increasingly mobile world, gamification is proving to be just the right 13

tool to guide that fun down the right channels . This ability to bring life to an inanimate image is what so excites in 14

marketing and advertising . Video game ʻrealitiesʼ are becoming the system to connect, and disconnect at the same time, our minds with the real world. Our ideas are data for the market to be collected and employed in order to feed the cycle of these virtual realities, i.e. to make them ʻrealʼ. This process, therefore, works in accordance with the real. This is understood as an empty box which collects data coming from the virtual. Once these data finds connections with reality, they migrate again to the virtual in order to generate new

triggered, the system works by itself. Users already know what to do because of the

familiarity of the action per se. On this see Laura Ferrarello, iBus. Navigating the City through buses, in CETLD Newsletter n. 10, September 2009 ,

http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0014/11084/CETLD-Newsletter10.pdf (August 2011) 12

On this see Sanford Kwinter, Far From Equilibrium. Essay on technology and Design

Culture. 13

Ibid.

Sharif Sakr, Augmented reality goes beyond gimmicks for business, in BBC News Technology, 2 May

2011, (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13262407) June 2011.

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data . Of course the marketʼs intent is directed towards finding new sources and real time understanding of individualsʼ desires and fantasies to be transformed into products. Playing and challenging real time fantasies is the system society is therefore currently employing for challenging, in its turn, new economic processes. This is the system upon which Groupon is based on, for instance. By proposing real time deals, it can trigger desires and make them spread out by involving users themselves. Users, indeed, invite more people to participate the deal in order to get a better deal. Thereby hyperlinks 16

travel through email, thus teasing the market . This is the ʻhyperlink societyʼ of desires. Groupon is only one example among many. Indeed there are other businesses that are looking more and more at 17

ʻaugmented realityʼ technology . By interacting with computer screens there is the possibility to ʻtry-onʼ sunglasses or new dresses in order to check how one looks. Screens become real time dressing rooms located in the no-space and no-time of the Internet. You can then access these products on your mobile phone and find their location address via a GPS system. This system creates new desires and, therefore, it drives people towards more purchases.

This system

doesnʼt concern only ordinary actions though, it extends its influence

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in other fields such as culture. The case of the Finnish National Library is an example. The goal for the library was to digitase its huge archive. The method employed to delivery this task has been thought by Microtask which invented a game, Digitalkoot, where users have to correctly type words in order to pass the level. Moreover, in order to get many users involved, the game establishes a cross–check for type mistakes so that a complete accuracy is ensured before passing to the final control. Of course there is a final score that increases the competitiveness of the game.

The latest and most direct example can be described for this concept is Bitcoin.

Biotcoin is a virtual currency which can be traded on the Internet without having a bank account. It is entirely generated and transferred among internet users without going outside the virtual, although its concept is based on real economic trading. In Bitcoin: Can a virtual currency do away with banks? In BBC News http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/9555513.stm (August 2011) 16

Groupon anxiety. The online-coupon firm will have to move fast to retain its

impressive lead. In “The Economist”, March 17 2011, http://www.economist.com/node/18388904 (July 2011) 17

On 5 March 2011 an angel appeared in London Victoria. It was not the ghost of an

ancient traveler but a commercial for a perfume brand. The company registered an increase of purchases after the unusual commercial campaign. Lynx Excite Angel Ambush London Victoria, in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFuUFeQIdpk (July 2011) 18

Sharif Sakr, Augmented reality goes beyond gimmicks for business.

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Microtask's Digitalkoot game helps weed mistakes out of the Finnish National Library's e-archives, in BBC 20 June 2011

Architecture as collective fantasy What happens then in this ʻhyperlink-cultureʼ to the ʻconcrete madeʼ architecture, which in the past socially played the role of making th

people dream as a single community? During the Gothic period (13 14th century AD), churches were the visual tool people experienced for imagining Paradise, i.e. a fantastic life better than the real one. This specific link was the result of a precise cultural environment whose following statement can give a hunch. Indeed according to Saint Thomas “God welcomes everything in the world, because everything is in harmony with His Being”. This statement affected the art production to such an extent that every work of art came to be an expression of Godʼs Being. Therefore the concept of correct representation (il vero) was intended as a spiritual experience beyond the form per se. To this extent it was thought to be realistic the 19

individualʼs empiric and unique experience . Gothic churches had to represent this spiritual individual experience which was thought as Godʼs one. Churchesʼ massive interior spaces were devices for representing the greatness of an ungraspable reality, so that imagination would be triggered and individual experience could take place. By means of this strategy the Church used architecture to make people believe that God indeed existed, and Paradise would be thought of as a real and eternal world. Churches were the visual interface for making real the fantasy of Paradise. Considering this

Arnold Hauser, Storia Sociale dell’arte, Torino: Einaudi 1955, p. 237-272

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strategy from a political and economic perspective, in a time when religion was the demagogic tool to conquer people from any nation, so that it could establish its own community, the Church used architecture to convince the medieval population that by participating in its dogma one could achieve his/her promised land. Consequently architects were pushed by the Church towards experimentation in order to make this fantasy real. Thereby fantasy was the trigger of Gothic

architecture

and

its

challenging

structural

system.

Accordingly during the twentieth century totalitarian political regimes, like Fascism and Nazism, architecture played the role of conquering and entertaining the masses. For Fascism, in particular, architecture became the visual and propaganda tool whereby Italians were inspired to believe they were the heirs of the ancient Roman Empire. Mussolini used the fantasies of the Roman Empire and of the nineteenth century Romantic concept of the Nation to mould Italians in 20

order to achieve his unquestioned leadership . Architecture became visual myth, and urban scenario, where the main actor, Mussolini, performed his play. Therefore the image of architecture per se played as interface between the masses - i.e. Italians - and its leader. By means of its aesthetic image architecture had to convey the Fascist

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message to the Nation in order to constitute Italy as single community 21

with single belief: Italians = Fascists . In this extent the masses were core element for totalitarian leadersʼ propaganda. They were the target to conquer so that leadership would be achieved without any objection. This element became reference for Fascist architecture, which had to delivery specific parameters the regime was asking for: monumental, universal, Roman and Italian, i.e. Fascist. Within this perspective urban spaces were anything but massesʼ containers. According to Elias Canetti, once reached their maximum capacity, spaces can make the masses move according to a specific rhythm, which disperse and gather people at the same time. According to Canetti:

Italiani, un popolo di poeti, artisti, eroi, santi, pensatori, scienziati, navigatori e

transmigratori (Italians, a nation of poets, artists, heroes, saints, thinkers, scientists, sailors and transmigrators). This sentence is engraved on the top of the Palazzo della Civiltà Romana in the supposed- to- be1942 Fascist Expo. This sentence depicts Italian Fascist propaganda. Its role was to inspire and make people believe they belonged to the myth of the Roman Empire, i.e. the ancient time when Italy conquered the ancient world. 21

Mussolini in Roger Griffin (ed), Fascism, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1995, p. 15

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There are two ways to antagonise dissolution of the masses. One is 22

the growing and the other is the rhythmic repetition . Indeed the masses populate urban spaces by following a movement that recalls the religious processions, thus making the space itself 23

wrapped of a religious and mythical atmosphere . Therefore, during totalitarian regimes the way the masses experienced urban spaces was equal to a religion procession. For the masses this entails to associate Fascist events to the religious ones and to understand the Fascist leader as someone upon human being. Indeed, by means of this association, Mussolini achieved his leadership. He became a supernatural creature, like God. Fascist architects, as part of the same community, believed in this collective myth and through their own work 24

contributed to fantasise and build the Fascist Roman Empire . Architecture was the ʻframeʼ, or the theatrical scenario, that portrayed the hero. By means of architecture, and its aesthetic, Mussolini achieved his mythical position.

Mussoliniʼs speech in Bologna in 1924.

Virtual world, real fantasies

Elias Canetti, ‘Massa e Architettura, Hitler second Speer’, in ‘Casabella’ n 525, 1986,

p. 30 23

Ibid.

On this see Emilio Gentile, Empty buildings, a remote mad dream - it is the

celebration of a disaster. Emilio Gentile Fascismo di Pietra, Bari: La Terza, 2008 and Emilio Gentile, Il Culto del Littorio, La sacralizzazione della Politica nell’Italia Fascista, Bari: La Terza, 2009.

307

According to what has been argued in the previous paragraphs, in contemporary society it appears that everyday tasks - such as reaching a location, going to a bar or restaurant, buying new clothes, accessories and so on - is based on the fantastic world developed by video game 'realities'. This attitude entails experiencing everyday 25

tasks in order to achieve scores . Therefore reality becomes part of the domain of fantasy; there is no longer division between the two. Fantasy becomes the medium between ourselves and the real world. Accordingly, in this interface screen dimension between ourselves and the real, we need a 'real' reality in order to fantasise new realities. As described in the first paragraph, in this perspective fantasy plays the role of translator. She can be described as a code that changes variables so that we can think and define our surroundings by looking at them by means of different interpretations. In this possibility of thinking new realities fantasy, although unforeseen, plays a core role for

contemporary

architecture.

which

way?

Contemporary

architecture, intended both as virtual and real reality, plays a double role: a model for virtual realties and a follower of them. For instance the established use of photorealistic renderings transfers reality to its digital representation thus blurring more and more the border between the two (Is it real or not?). If in the past people were used to compare

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photorealistic renderings to their real environments, currently it occurs the opposite. Photorealistic renderings are now reference for reality. Within this extent, architecture falls in the same riddle. Rather than trying to challenge the existing context, architecture wraps itself in the cocoon of digital representation. When architecture gets trapped in the riddle of representation (for representation' sake), it becomes follower of virtual realities thereof. Hence my concern is related to the indifference architecture has for reality. Indeed it seems that in this context it is missing a reference element whereby ides are challenged, because of the contrast between representation and reality. Moreover as designers and viewers inhabit the realm of fantasy without coming back to the real world, because of virtual realities, fantasy itself turns to be the element that gather data from other virtual realities and

"It's fun and addictive as a game itself, just like many other mini-games online, but I

don't feel like I'm wasting my time because I know I'm doing something helpful," says Mr Valtamo.

"At the university, I've noticed how useful e-archives are, so I can see the immediate advantage of the project. "And I must admit that it's always nice to see my name and face on the top score board." In Katia Moskvitch, Gamification time: What if everything were just a game?.in BBC News Technology, 20 June 2011 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13749897) June 2011.

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make them source of experience for designers and viewers, when they interpret what is understood as reality. Nevertheless this fantasy appears to be sterile as deprived of its reference element, i.e. reality, that works as term of contrasting comparison. Reflection upon the real world is therefore diminished, as the virtual overlaps the real. On the other hand, by following fantasy's roles of dynamism, improbability and unpredictability, designers and viewers change their mutual perspective in real time by keeping her as a common and continuous interface that deals with 'reality' as data. Reality is outside the domain of one's existence, fantasy deals with it. Therefore, according to what has been argued so far, what has been modified from the pre digital age is the way the real is looked at. Whether for Pirandello the real was the final outcome and fantasy, the translator to make people think, nowadays the real is that data to be inputted into an algorithm and fantasy the dynamic element of exchange among virtual realities. Technology created the conditions to cope with the unforeseen aspect of fantasy, although it restricted fantasy to a specific domain of existence, nothing beyond it. Accordingly architecture is, firstly, modelled in terms of 'outside world'. Within these extents it establishes a point of reference for communities to construct challenging comprehensible systems. In other words architecture is a visual and communicative tool that anybody can think to recognise. Later on architecture becomes follower. Because of the constrained transformations led by virtual realities' systems

the

‘real’ world, designers

camouflaged

architecture accordingly. In other words there are data taken by the real. These are reckon enough to understand the real so that architecture can take on its independent life in the virtual. On the other hand fantasy can performe its ungraspable feature by means of an algorithm that takes care of giving form to the new real by controlling fantasy at the same time. Hence architecture comes back to the 'real'. Does it seem that this process sounds like an oxymoron? Nevertheless it appears that technology changed the common understanding of spaces. Indeed in this paradigm from model to follower the key element that influences this process is society and its interpretation of space. Social interpretations of space are interwoven with reality and fantasy and as such it is important to clarify how this interpretation functions. Slavoj Žižek illustrates this complex with the following example,

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referring to the way we perceive reality by means of the conventions we associate with objects and situations. He describes the first sequence of the 1984 Sergio Leone’s movie Once Upon a Time in America as follows, A somewhat analogous effect of the real occurs at the beginning of Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America: a phone goes on ringing endlessly; when, finally, a hand picks up the receiver, it continues to ring. The first sound belongs to ‘reality’, whereas the ringing that goes on after the receiver is picked up comes out of the 26

non- specified void of the Real.

By making fantasy the centre of contemporary living, it precipitates a general 'follower effect' and architecture becomes one of its exemplars. In other words we are designing realities according to the reflection arising from our fantasies. When reading the daily news, it is a recurrent idiom how reality per se appears foreign and difficult to understand begging the question whether our realm of 'real' fantasy is, for us, more comfortable. Social networks challenge this world of individual fantasy since they provide one with a full range of tools to

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'make it', despite the system these networks is based on is a rebranded interpretation of architecture, as space for gathering and making communities interact. Reality, it would seem, is an undesirable aspect of our life, the element we want to escape since we cannot control its course, desiring instead the fantastic dream world we can create by means of our fantasies. This is a customised world made for and by each of us. On this condition Žižek employs another example,

describing

René Magritte’s

painting La Lunette d’approche. Although the painting is from 1963, there is a similarity of content, whether we project

Slavoj Žižek, Interrogating the Real, Rex Butler and Scott Stephens (eds), New York:

Continuum 2005, p. 151.

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the

figuration

towards

our

painting

portrays

the

realities. a

painting Magritte’s

half

open

window, where there is painted a blue sky and white clouds. Through the windowpane we can see the outside that is a solid black mass. Although in the window glass there is depicted a blue sky, the ‘real’ shows nothing. In this case the window, with its glass frame, is a screen that interfaces us with the outside reality. In this screen we fantasise a nice 'outside world'. On the other hand the real beyond that screen is ungraspable, we cannot really understand it, therefore there is no real. According to Žižek, who refers to Lacan’s work: The translation of this painting into Lacanese goes by itself: the frame of the window pane is the fantasy frame that constitutes reality, whereas through the crack we get an insight into the ‘impossible’ Real, the Thing-in-itself.

The point made by Žižek, by means of Magritte’s work is very important for understanding the way contemporary architecture is experienced and how this has changed as a result of our engagement in the world of fantasy. If one makes his/her own world, by means of virtual worlds, then architecture loses its collective role, i.e. that of collecting communities in the same space because of a collective ideal. In place of this collective activity there is a very singular experience. Fantasies are unique, virtual devices are thought to be individual, the whole system wants us to experience reality individually.

Thereby

architecture

has

customised.

Customization seems to be the system to adapt architecture to the

“In his Logic of Sense, Deleuze aims at displacing the opposition that defines the

Platonic space, that of supra-sensible Idea and their sensible-material copies, into the opposition of substantial/opaque depth of the body and the pure surface of the SenseEvent. This surface depends on the emergence of the language: it is the nonsubstantial void that separates Things from Words.” Slavoj Žižek, p. 169. 28

Slavoj Žižek, p. 150

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current social, political, economical and technological system. We cannot grasp architecture in a unified manner, for within the same object there is a multiplicity embedded that makes architecture itself camouflaged according to the user. Hence it follows that the attention of contemporary architecture is directed towards satisfying personal desires and fantasies through customization. Within these extents architecture becomes more a product, a commodity, like an Armani dress. Algorithms enact this role, making architecture a feasible object for the 'real time hyperlink society'. Hence the role played by technologies; devices for conveying dreams. They can yield fantasies. Within these extents there is no longer a defined line between fantastic worlds and realities but only a threshold where one clashes with the other. Contemporary technology increasingly blurs the threshold on making fantastic scenarios. Interactivity comes as an effect of a society based on the instant. Nevertheless by adapting architecture to this real time and customised system, there is no sign of criticality. In order to trigger and follow desires, there is no room left for creating social statements and messages that can give architecture a position that goes beyond the product and locates it as a social vehicle for arising criticality in people's mind.

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However there are architectural patterns that see fantasy from Pirandello's perspective. Within this view fantasy is still the interface between designers and viewers that keeps reality as its outcome. In these patterns the narrative that architecture can produce is still central and, therefore, the poetic aspect of fantasy becomes the tool to convey ideas. Technology is not marginalised however. It plays a key role in making the reality real. To some extent these designers are returning to reality by passing through the digital world and not stopping in it. How can architecture grasp the ungraspable? How can spaces for living, working and relaxing inherit and translate this condition? For these designers interactivity entails being capable of reinventing realities; in other words, being capable of making real-time realities. The dynamic construction of space can be achieved by a dynamic perspective of the object per se or by robots that can interface the client with architecture. In this way dynamism comes to be part of reality rather that lying in the temporary and digital real. The ungraspable therefore becomes part of the way we dwell in spaces. Back to reality According to what has been argued so far, architecture is currently investigating different strategies that face and cope with communities'

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fantasy and virtual realities. On one hand there is the parameter29

driven architecture, mainly promoted by Patrick Schumacher , wherein the parameters within a code can make and create a certain interactivity in the system that fabricates architecture. In this case the interactive part is embedded in the design process so that the final result is a perfect customised object for the client. In this way there is the possibility of establishing multiple scenarios by means of the process. Algorithms supervise the design process by inserting data, i.e. the supposed- to-be real, that are processed through fantasy. This precise and specific system of delivering architecture is pursuing on mass producing customised objects wherein the promoted image is a happy community with individual desires. Is this a way to challenge contemporary society? I can argue that architecture, as social vehicle, needs

contrasting

elements.

Architecture

needs

enemies .

Architecture needs the ungrasped, uncontrolled and unforeseen fantasy because her attitude is what can show us aspects of the real that we could not grasp otherwise. Zarathustra told us "he would rather guess than know". Parametrics doesn't countenance that postulate, [...] 100 Sagrada Familias mean something quite different 31

than one [ and an unfinished one, at that] . In other words if events take a course that contrast with our expectations, i.e. codified thought, we can understand alter aspects otherwise ignored. This is fantasy. Fantasy is our vehicle of self criticality, it is the unexpected side of the real that makes us part of our society, therefore it is the vehicle that increases our self criticality to be addressed towards our surrounding, i.e. political and economical systems. According to Eric Owen Moss: I prefer the skepticism of ordering mechanisms, than the allegiance to anyone. The stretch between the two possibilities may be where the attenuated truth lies: Truth as a stretch between prospects; the tension between options rather than the selection of one, and the

On this see Patrik Schumacher, Parametricism as Style - Parametricist Manifesto,

Presented and discussed at the Dark Side Club , 11th Architecture Biennale, Venice 2008, http://www.patrikschumacher.com/Texts/Parametricism%20as%20Style.htm (June 2011). An extended discussion about Parametricism happened last March 2011 at the Architectural Association in London in the symposium organised by Schumacher himself, Debating Fundamentals: Probing the Autopoiesis of Architecture. AA Lecture Collection, http://www.aaschool.ac.uk/AALIFE/PHOTOLIBRARY/videoarchive.php?page=1&orderB y=speaker&order=asc (July 2011) 30

Eric Owen Moss’ response to Patrick Schumacher lecture at Sci_arc on September

2010, in ‘Sci_arc’, n.1, backcover page. 31

Ibid.

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elimination of the others. [...] Regulating the form of choice means 32

choice is gone .

R&Sie(n), An Architecture des humeurs”, Le Laboratoire Paris January- March 2010.

On the other hand there is the architecture that works within 33

(n)certainties , and defines this specific scenario as domain for working. The uncertainty becomes the interface whereby architecture can grasp the ungraspable, the real, by transforming the ungraspable into the system whereby architecture itself is located. Whether, as in the first strategy, fantasy is employed as data, i.e. as an element to be input into the system in order to convey products that can satisfy needs and desires by means of technology, as in the second strategy, where fantasy is the trigger for the design process, fantasy creates that odd condition, described by Pirandello, that goes beyond conventions, by breaking them, and unfolds unforeseen scenarios.

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Architecture in this case takes risks, risks of the unknown, and works within it. Architecture embeds the unfinished and the uncertain. By means of fantasy architecture opens up the gaps of reality. It breaks reality. It never lays in the virtual, as the virtual is what completes these gaps. These virtual scenarios, indeed, become grounds for creating architecture. These scenarios condition an environment, characterised by 'flipped' realities and 'flipped' social roles. For the exhibition "An Architecture des humeurs", which took place in Paris at Le Laboratoire from 22 January to 26 March 2010 , R&Sie(n) used human humours

to provide information for architecture about the

32 33

Ibid.

(n)certanities is the title of the research Francois Roche/R&Sie(n) is pursuing through

his practice and students at Columbia, USC and Angewante. On this see http://www.new-territories.com/blog/n1/ncertainties.wordpress.com/research/index.html (June 2011) 34

Specifically, the focus here is on using nanotechnology to collect physiological data of

all participants to prepare and model, by means of these “moods” – a (post)modern translation of Hippocrates’ humeurs – the foundations of an architecture in permanent mutation, modeled (and modulated) by our unconscious. An architecture of uncertainty and non-determination, the first prototypes of which should be very soon available thanks to technical progress. David Sanson, Editorial, in “Les Architecture des

Humeurs”, exhibition at Le Laboratorie, Paris January-March 2010, in http://www.newterritories.com/blog/architecturedeshumeurs/wp-

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relationship between body and space. R&Sie(n) designed the exhibition space so that visitors' body can interact with it through emotions. These, indeed, become the mediation device between body and space. On one hand human reactions are the way the body establishes and negotiates its limits with space. On the other hand these emotions are detected and analysed to understand new 35

possibilities for contemporary dwelling .

Therefore this exhibition

triggers the instinctive reactions of the body in order to understand new system for dwelling spaces. Fantasy, in this case, is the device that designers employ as well as viewers, but with different extents. Reality is the common territory between them, whereas technology is the tool that makes this relationship happen. For designers fantasies are used to understand human body, at the same time human body is involved in the exhibition by its own self reactions that can be freely expressed in an individual way. According to Francois Roche: The “Architecture of Humours” is a way of breaking and entering into language’s mechanism of dissimulation in order to physically construct its contradictions. It means staging a break-in to the logic of things when language has to negotiate with the depths of the body, down to the bottom folds, like with Antonin Artaud and his compulsive 36

catatonia .

content/uploads/2010/pdf/mouvement%20UK%20Une_architecture_des_humeurs_UKli ght2.pdf (August 2011) 35

A voice whispers into the visitor’s ear. Let it enter into you, breath it in. You are in

absolutely no danger from this vapour. Your family has become a conflict zone and you can no longer calm things down. It is an illusion to believe that architecture can help you with that. But you can negotiate the distances by negotiating the details. The area where you live can react to your desires. It has the power to allow you to experience this conflict without denying its existence or making up fantasies about it. Your living area can be transformed into a morphology of the moment. You are free to go along with others or retreat into yourself. Francois Roche, Protocol/Process, interview Caroline Naephegyi, in “An Architecture des Humeurs”.

Ibid. It would be meaningless to say that it includes music, dance, pantomime, or

mimicry. Obviously it uses movement, harmonies, rhythms, but only to the point that they can con-cur in a sort of central expression without advantage for any one particular art. This does not at all mean that it does not use ordinary actions, ordinary passions, but like a spring board uses them in the same way that HUMOR AS DESTRUCTION can serve to reconcile the corrosive nature of laughter to the habits of reason. Antonine Artaud, The Theatre of Cruelty, First Manifesto, in Antonine Artaud, The Theatre and its Double, New York: Grove Press 1958, p. 91

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R&Sie(n), An Architecture des humeurs, exhibition at Le Laboratoire, Paris 22 January, 26 March 2010

This architecture uses social conventions and different realities as domain of existence. Indeed Roche says: What we like to do is just the opposite, to seek out the dark side, our animal side, in order to subvert the other side using reactive and emotional data. We are glad that our choices are not guided exclusively by architectural conventions, both the conventions of the

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client and those of the architects themselves .

These spaces are entropic elements, a dissymmetry between the left 38

and the right , to be interpreted into alter

scenarios that are the

translation of multiform realities by means of fantasy herself. Within this perspective it is recognisable that individuality within a community can establish continuity among parts. In other words this kind of fantasy can unfold communication with the public by means of its 40

ungraspable power . Within this extent architecture is used as a vehicle for social communication.

Francois Roche, ‘Protocol/Process’.

Rosalind Krauss, ‘Entropy’, in Rosalind Krauss Yve-Alain Bois (eds), Formless. A

User’s book, New York: Zone Books, 1997, p. 73. 39

Alter is the Latin word that stands for different. In Latin alter includes the Other. There

is a recognised differentiation between two things. 40

In the same interview quoted above Francois Roche describes the way he uses

algorithms. Through the use of these computational, mathematical and mechanization procedures, the urban structure engenders successive, improbable and uncertain aggregations that constantly rearticulate the relationship between the individual and the collective. In this extent it is clear how parameters are used as feedback for understanding social needs, where with social it is embedded the relationship between the individual and his/her community.

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R&Sie(n), An Architecture des humeurs, exhibition at Le Laboratoire, Paris 22 January, 26 March 2010

Conclusion Fantasy is one of the most intense entities for thinkers since mankind started to create tools. Imagination drives them forward making and challenging new territories, in order to rethink and challenge the real. Although the physicality of the real is losing its own body, in place of virtual devices, in architecture there is a parallel system that looks at the virtual as topic for the real. Thereby my concern, argued throughout this article, is related to the interconnections among the real, virtual and fantasy, particularly in architecture. Whether the emergence of virtual realities records the decay of any hierarchical attempts for controlling up-bottom spaces, substituted by top-down systems, from a social point of view the emergence of 'hyperlinkculture' creates a virtual parallel world more real than reality. This attitude transforms into commodity any real social need by creating systems that no longer deal with realities, as they assume that reality is embedded by means of data input in the algorithm. However, at the same time, these digital devices make us acknowledge the real from alter perspectives, thus making systems more feasible for our times. In conclusion when fantasy is transformed into a meta-commodity, i.e. the entity targeted by business to yield other commodities, the

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process of thinking is reversed. By exploiting users' trust, established by exploiting fantasy itself, users[themselves] are not just knowledge seeking individuals, but also social beings intensely connected to 41

each other online and offline . In her BBC article, Internet of things blurs the line between bits and atoms, Moskvitch describes how technology can help us interact with objects, which conversely have a mind of their own. Imagine googling your home to find your child's lost toy. Or remotely turning on the tumble dryer for yet another cycle - after it has texted you that the clothes were still damp. Or your plant tweeting you to be watered. It might have been sci-fi just a decade ago, but with the internet forcing its way into every aspect of our lives, cyberspace is leaking out 42

into the real world.

By linking our existence to a larger network, we become extensions and knots, or, to some extent, hyperlinks as we convey ourselves data that connect other hyperlinks. Therefore our habits are data sought by the Internet. Nevertheless because of this virtual reality based on fantasy and enhanced by digital technologies, architecture can

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embrace the challenge for understanding these conditions and designing arguments by means of architecture itself, rather than following the product logic that is detached from any social arguing and democratic thinking. By referring to Eric Owen Mossʼ motto, Make it new, architecture has achieved an expanded field, in space and time, that not only offers different and multiple understandings of digital technology (in an architectural way of course) but also improved its social position by assigning the role of finding the gaps of reality, by means of fantasy. This attitude can make new and unconventional urban scenarios, by rethinking the reality that surrounds us not only in its aesthetic perception but also in terms of relationship that people in general establish with their community, i.e. sensations. Mark Dean, who was part of the team that designed the first PC for IBM, pointed out how digital technology is only a device. What is making the difference is the way digital technology is used, for instance the social

Felix Stalder & Christine Mayer, ‘The Second Index. Search Engines, Personalization

and Surveillance’, in Konrad Becker Felix Stalder (eds), Deep Search. The Politics of Search beyond Google, Innsbruck: StudienVerlag 2009, p. 103 42

Katia Moskvitch, Internetofthings blurs the line between bits and atoms, in BBC 2 June 2011,

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13632206 (June 2011).

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relationship spread out by Social Networks . Accordingly the recent events of the London riots depicted for us another example of how we cannot blame the device per se but the use that we can make of 44

devices . By respecting the ungraspable condition that fantasy has, by understanding her dynamic and irrepressible attitude, as described by Pirandello, there is a potential for designers to make fantasy their partner by playing the game that fantasy likes to play. Fantasy can help on making criticism back to architecture. Contemporary fantasy, because of technological and digital innovations, in terms of devices, can be the social vehicle and re-establish the relationship between architecture and society. Within this extent contemporary architecture can achieve the specific social role of communicating different realities of different communities. As migrations are re-designing the geography of our nations, to such an extent that the concept of nations per se needs to be re-discussed, there is the need of understanding social changes. Fantasy has been used as trigger, and translator, of these messages, as literature, theatre and art showed 45

us . Technology can help on understanding current society and creating systems feasible for it. Fantasy is the entity that connects worlds by looking at the complexity of these worlds, i.e. by understanding diversities. To establish unified fantasies that can vary within codified systems kills contemporary society. To constrain onesʼ hopes and dreams within a product kills progress. To lose the ungraspable condition of fantasy is to lose fantasy itself. Fantasy needs to open up the gaps of reality. When design joins this uncertain condition, there is change for triggering ideas that take us towards a sustainable future. Quoting Žižek once again:

PCs are being replaced at the center of computing not by another type of device—

though there’s plenty of excitement about smart phones and tablets—but by new ideas about the role that computing can play in progress. These days, it’s becoming clear that innovation flourishes best not on devices but in the social spaces between them, where people and ideas meet and interact. It is there that computing can have the most powerful impact on economy, society and people’s lives. By Mark Dean, Chief Technology Officer, IBM Middle East and Africa, IBM Leads the way in the Post- PC Era. In Building a Smart Planet Blog, August 10 2011. http://asmarterplanet.com/blog/2011/08/ibm-leads-the-way-in-the-post-pc-era.html (August 2011) 44

How has technology affected the riots in England?, in BBC News

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/9563177.stm (August 2011) 45

The question, then for the theatre, is to create a metaphysic of speech, gesture and

expression, in order to rescue it from its servitude to psychology and “human interest”. But all this can be of no use unless behind such an effort there is some kind of real metaphysical inclination, an appeal to certain unhabitual ideas, which by their very nature cannot be limited or even formally depicted. Antonine Artaud, p. 90.

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Einstein ʻdesubstantialized gravity by way of reducing it to geometry: gravity is not a substantial force which ʻbendsʼ space 46

but the name for the curvature of space itself . Let us, as designers, be upset and be mocked by the quick housemaid called fantasy.

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Slavoj Žižek, p. 193