Surrounded by rocky mountains and immersed in a flourishing vine-carpeted countryside, Gibellina was a small town in the central area of Sicily, Italy. On 1968, the urban center has been left in ruins by a terrible earthquake.
A brand new city was rebuilt some kilometres away and some of Italy’s top leading artists were commissioned to transform the newborn city into an architectural and artistic workshop. Alberto Burri focused his research on the remainings of the old city: he entirely covered the ruins of the flattened city with concrete, preserving the original shape of the buildings and the streetscape.
The result is an urban scale maze made of huge five foot strata of concrete; a roofless cathedral laying down on the hill in a timeless tribute to the ghost city and its past life.
The “Finnish villas” are single family prefab houses built in Milan in the 50s. A modular and standard structure becomes unique thanks to the traces of the life lived in each and every unit.
Surrounded by the reddish dunes of Negev desert, the Negev Brigade Memorial stands on a hill facing the the city of Be’er Sheva, Israel.
Designed by Dani Karavan and built between 1963 and 1968, it is the first site specific environmental sculpture ever realized in Israel. The artist describes the memorial itself as a “sculpture made of natural material and memories”.
Made by raw concrete the Memorial consists of 18 separate elements which allude and illustrate the brigade history: a central tower dominates the peak of the hill symbolizing a watchtower and a pipeline tunnel in a tribute to the water supply line defended by the soldiers in that area. Scattered around, the other elements follow a rotational disposition as if they were whipped up by a desert storm. Engraved in the concrete the are the names of the fallen soldiers, excerpts from their diaries, verses of poetry and prose.
Memory is not the only element to typify the place, the visitors are invited to climb over and wander through the gigantic sculptural forms to interact with their history and transform the memorial into a place of life.
International art collective Cracking Art Group have placed 50 large-scale blue snails all across the roof of Duomo Cathedral, Milan. The goal is to raise awareness to the tremendous need of restoring the historic building. The snail, known for its slow pace, can be alluding to the gradual deterioration of the architecture that has perhaps gone unnoticed over time. The sculpture are made of recycled plastic.
The IACP is a complex of social housing built between the late '70s and the '80s in Bollate, Italy.
The anonymous modular spaces of the maze-like porch at the ground floor, offer an opportunity for the free reinterpretation of the common areas: traces of degradation coexist with plenty outdoor living room in a deep overview of the interactions between architecture and man.
Waterpipes are out in the open in Berlin as the city is built based upon an aquifer. These coloured elements create artificial frames to investigate the urban landscape and the city itself.