SPONTANEOUS LANDSCAPE

SPONTANEOUS LANDSCAPE is a research project that stems from the everyday memories of our childhood. While crossing the Italian plains, we noticed these small architectures—silent and often abandoned—that sparked great interest and curiosity in us, to the point of beginning to catalogue them.

These are honest architectures, built without architects, born from the need to respond to a specific necessity and to a specific place—with its morphology, its climate, its materials.

The research consists of a catalogue, which now includes 200 examples of small houses. Each one is identified by its geographical coordinates, photographed during the same time of year, at the same time of day, from the same distance, and under the same lighting conditions. All have been surveyed in plan, elevation, and section, and redrawn with the aim of defining an abacus of possibilities.

The research later became an installation, exhibited at the 12th São Paulo Architecture Biennial Todo dia/Everyday, consisting of an imaginary landscape made up of physical models of 30 of the 200 small houses. Each house is placed on a brass pedestal, which elevates its presence and attributes to it a different meaning. In front of the “orchestra” of houses, a lectern displays the research book.

The book was later exhibited at 5th Lisbon Architecture Triennale in the exhibition Economy of Means, under the Economy of Repetition section.