NATURE_Michele De Lucchi L’anello mancante (The Missing Link)

7th December 2018 – 3rd March 2019 www.maxxi.art | #NatureDeLucchi I make objects, objects of any kind, but objects nonetheless. They could be design, art or architectural objects. For my are objects anyway. (Michele De Lucchi)

Rome, 6th December 2018. Architect and designer Michele De Lucchi, who grew up next to the Florentine radicals and Sottsass, created an iconic object such as the Tolomeo lamp, designed Olivetti’s computers and re-humanised buildings all over the world, is the protagonist of the sixth edition of the cycle of monographic exhibitions NATURE, curated by Margherita Guccione, Director of MAXXI Architettura, and Pippo Ciorra, Senior Curator of MAXXI Architettura. This exhibition formula of MAXXI requires the hosted architect to design a site-specific installation summarising their own architectural research.

De Lucchi, who has rigorously and masterfully delved into the different scales of (from design to cities) since the beginning of his activity, has chosen to represent himself with the installation L’anello mancante, a sculpture at the crossroads of object and building, an environmental installation loaded with meaning and references to his imagery and building practice, displayed in the spaces of the Gian Ferrari Gallery from 7th December 2018 to 3rd March 2019.

In the words of Margherita Guccione, Director of MAXXI Architettura and curator of the exhibition, “in its effort to give voice to contemporary architects, MAXXI, which has always been open to the evolution of the global architectural practice, also wants to showcase the specificity of its architectural culture as interpreted by architects such as De Lucchi, who are masters at combining “local” traditions and innovation, nurtured utopias when training while being able to convince industries of the need of a project, and appreciate the contemporary world by listening to nature, making use of technology and embracing the ancient knowledge of craftsmanship”.

L’anello mancante, the design of which will become part of the Collections of MAXXI Architettura, is an accessible circular space covered with elements in Solid Surface HI-MACS®, the shape of which is inspired by the wooden covers typical of houses; the wall of the structure, permeated by a play of light and shade, enhances the visitor experience, thereby creating an amazing, changing, evocative space. With this installation, De Lucchi suggests that visitors look at, go through and explore the structure, the very shape of which evokes the need to find the new concatenations that we more or less consciously lack in the fabric of our civil and productive relationships as well as our moral vision of society.

The NATURE exhibition project poses the challenge of interacting with Zaha Hadid’s space through one’s idea of architecture. It is a full-contact experience where to represent oneself, one’s design history and the most recent research without an actual commission: it is a small project for architects who are used to working on a large scale, but it is loaded with meaning and content in the space of a few metres. Therefore, after the likes of Francesco Venezia, Alberto Campo Baeza, West8, UN Studio and Álvaro Siza, De Lucchi will enable MAXXI to make a step forward by delving into the relationship that is shared (or should be shared) by nature and the urban fabric.

In the words of Pippo Ciorra, curator of the exhibition, “the installation proposed for the exhibition is a design that would work on all scales, from bracelets to walled cities. It is a space, but also an open/closed conceptual topology, a wall enclosing a space but also an inhabitable and explorable space. It is a piece of nature, but also the result of the implementation of highly-sophisticated materials. It is a device aimed at preventing us from creating categories and rendering the borders between scales and disciplines inoffensive”.

A catalogue curated by Alessandro D’Onofrio will be produced within the framework of the exhibition, which will feature the outfitting project, a selection works including the most recent research projects and an interview to architect De Lucchi on the themes touched upon by his work.

The press kit and images of the exhibition can be downloaded from the Reserved Area of the Fondazione MAXXI’s website at http://www.maxxi.art/en/area-stampa/ by typing in the password areariservatamaxxi

MAXXI - National Museum of 21st-Century Arts www.maxxi.art - info: 06.320.19.54; [email protected] opening times: 11:00 am – 7:00 pm (Tue, Weds, Fri, Sat, Sun) |11:00 am – 10:00 pm (Thu) | closed on Mondays

MAXXI PRESS OFFICE +39 06 324861 [email protected]

NATURE_Michele De Lucchi L’anello mancante 7th December 2018 – 3rd March 2019

Preface Giovanna Melandri President Fondazione MAXXI

He has the gift of exploring the places, spaces and objects of our everyday life – a public or private life, a shared or solitary one - with the skill of one who knows how to connect architectural construction and creation of design to the themes that mark our condition deeply in this age of both globalisation and fragmentation. The Missing Link, the installation designed and built specifically for the lines and atmospheres of the MAXXI, is almost the manifesto of a research that speaks to all: to the disenchanted visitor, to the lover of beauty, to the disillusioned citizen as to the dazed worker. Michele De Lucchi, the architect and designer protagonist of this sixth appointment of the Nature cycle, explicitly suggests that we observe, enter and walk through the construction, with its mix of light and shadow, and whose shape itself evokes the need to rediscover, in the web of our social and productive relationships, in our moral vision of society, the new links we are orphaned of, whether we know it or not. With his profile and professional path, De Lucchi fits in perfectly with the soul and the vocation of the MAXXI, which is increasingly imposing itself as national museum of architecture, as workshop that favours the encounter and the dissemination of the different facets of a culture and a creativity that draw on many artistic and technical sources. The buildings designed for countless patrons, the first-hand experience in symbolic companies, the design objects that have entered into collections halfway across the world, the use of innovative methods and spaces for offices, and computer technologies, make Michele De Lucchi a precious witness of how the spirit and the habitat of a community may evolve. So, after welcoming Francesco Venezia, Alberto Campo Baeza, West8, UN Studio and Álvaro Siza, with Michele De Lucchi the MAXXI Architettura goes one step further, investigating the connection that bonds (or should bond) nature to the urban fabric. De Lucchi helps us to explore it with precious freedom..

NATURE_Michele De Lucchi L’anello mancante 7th December 2018 – 3rd March 2019

A “BRIDGING” ARCHITECT Margherita Guccione, Director MAXXI Architettura and curator

For the sixth appointment of the NATURE cycle of monograph exhibitions, the MAXXI Architecture has involved Michele De Lucchi in the challenging task of entering into relation with the space designed by Zaha Hadid through his personal idea of architecture. A hand-to-hand encounter and an occasion to present himself, his project history, the latest research and achievements, without having to answer to an actual client or a functional program: a small project for an architect used to dealing with great dimensions, however, extremely dense in content and meanings, concentrated in the few square metres of a Gallery. Other architects of international renown, such as Álvaro Siza, Francesco Venezia or Ben Van Berkel, have in turn presented, in the same gallery, their reflection on how architecture should be presented, through which new expressive media or new communication possibilities. Architects known for their advanced research or acknowledged masters of a school of thought, all chosen for their interest in the relationship between architecture and nature: in this selection of voices, we could not overlook, in representation of , Michele De Lucchi, whose personal debt of inspiration to the world of nature takes the series of installations designed for the MAXXI one step further. Michele De Lucchi, known mainly for his contribution to the world of design and the objects that are now part of our everyday life, has throughout his whole career addressed with great conceptual imagination and constructive knowledge the various scales of architecture, from design to city planning, seizing on every work occasion the opportunity to respond to the functional request with a strong and recognizable inspiration often borrowed from the natural world, seen as a matrix of creativity and materials. Throughout his professional history, De Lucchi has always been organically engaged in a virtuous industry- creativity system; we may say he himself has been a joining link, by paraphrasing the title of his installation at the MAXXI, between the world of industrial production and a creativity that is inspired and friendly, experimental but accessible and immediate, generous and at the same time rigorous and respectful of historical contexts or functional programs. A professional of creativity, which may sound like a contradiction in terms but in his case is not: with his particular way of approaching the project, always preceded by a purely formal creative moment, in the solitude of his carpentry workshop where ideas take shape in the wooden sculptures he produces in endless series, De Lucchi has created a bridge between crafts and industry that well represents a chapter of the all Italian history of enlightened clients, of entrepreneurs who believed and invested in the added value of the project, and of an architect capable of technical and aesthetic innovation, who never falls into a constricting and repetitive style. In its mission to give voice and project opportunities to contemporary architects, the Italian national museum of architecture - always open to the evolution of architectural practice in a global world - also aims at testifying the specificity of Italy’s architectural culture, represented by architects such as De Lucchi, who skilfully combine “local” tradition with an innovation that looks to the future, architects who have nourished utopias during their formative period but have managed to convince corporations of the need for projects, and who now try to capture contemporaneity by listening to nature and by trusting technology but also the ancient wisdom of crafts.

NATURE_Michele De Lucchi L’anello mancante 7th December 2018 – 3rd March 2019

NATURALNESS Pippo Ciorra

NATURE is a ductile and resistant exhibitionproject. After seven years and six protagonists,it has started to expand its range of actionand reveal its potential. Created as a longtermsequence of architecture installations“generated” in some way by the MAXXI’sinaugural exhibition “Spazio”, the NATUREprogramme has grown to become a deeper andmore complex investigation on architecture. Thetextile landscape by West8 and the anamorphosisby UNStudio demonstrated the potential of theMuseum’s space in displaying experimentalarchitectures that reflect on the nature of theinstitution and of the contemporary project.With Alberto Campo Baeza and FrancescoVenezia the programme expanded its range ofaction to include the ability to create a hybridbetween exhibition and installation. As withthe first two editions, these architects wereinvited to interpret the space of the gallery, butalso encouraged to insert some selected tracesof their work within their design: drawings,models, scale fragments. It is difficult to forgetCampo Baeza’s poetic tree, with its flowering ofdrawings, or Francesco Venezia’s water basin,which were capable of establishing a unexpectedharmony with Zaha Hadid’s architecture. Just asit is hard to forget the fifth chapter of the NATUREseries, the project by Portuguese master ÁlvaroSiza who took possession of the gallery space bytransforming it into a place designed specificallyto display his projects. Now it’s Michele De Lucchi’s turn. For us shyand awed observers of that middle groundbetween architecture, product design andinterior design, De Lucchi has long been a reveredand somewhat remote legend. He maturedamid ’s radicals, followed Sottsassin the legendary Memphis group, designedthe unattainable Tolomeo, worked for Olivettiand designed his computers, re-humanizedthe offices and image of the Italian Poste,Telecom and other indigestible national andinternational corporate monsters, dabbed in theTriennale and the Palaexpo, designed interiorsand objects at every latitude and longitude.Nevertheless, as summarised to perfection bySergio Polano some years ago, for a long timewe looked at him with respect but also from acertain distance, confining him “into the easyand reassuring definition of the typically-Italianbrilliant designer, and as such not exempt from[…] frequent forays (italics mine) into the area ofinterior design and architecture”. In the fourteenyears from Polano’s definition to today, De Lucchihas worked hard - with naturalness, with nostrain nor feeling of retaliation - on cancellingthat distance, on making everyone understandthe meaning of the title chosen by Polano forhis contribution to the Electa monograph:De Lucchi is not a multi-scale designer, whoranges between disciplines, from spoons to thecity, rather he performs only one job: designer,in general. In the interview contained in thiscatalogue, De Lucchi seems to pick up the threadof that implicit dialogue with Polano, and startsoff with a slightly politically incorrect statementthat not many architects today would have thecourage to make, even if personally agree withhim: “I make objects, I have always made objects,of all kinds, but objects nonetheless. Theymay be objects of design, art or architecture. Because my architectures are also objects”. Ibelieve that the entire content of this cataloguemay be summed up in this statement. With fewwords, De Lucchi reaps a great result. First ofall, he deletes a founding dividing line in ourarchitecture, the one that places devotees ofthe city on one side and devotees (heretics) ofobjects on the other, by explaining to us thatthere is no opposition between the ideas of thecity as layout and of the city as sum of buildings. Then, he demolishes the prejudice of those whothink that the scale of the project, and especiallythat of object design, is a kind of confinementfrom which one may escape only for short andelegant sorties, and with a limited-scope safeconduct.Lastly, he sows gentle and reasonabledoubts about our educational system, whichhas brought about the distinction between theeducational paths of the architect, the designer,the urban

planner and the landscapist, just whenthe world was already making the boundariesbetween these disciplines increasingly uncertainand blurred, overwhelmed by other criteria andother project paradigms. Actually De Lucchi, asa gentleman, gracefully points out the merits ofa disciplinary organization he personally did notbend to, but which perhaps allowed architectureto become more environmental and social. DeLucchi however is part of a firmament of Italiandesigners born and raised as architects, capableof thinking of the object and of the city (andtoday of the environment) as if they were a singletheme. From this point of view, the installation hehas presented in our NATURE cycle is a perfectcounterpoint to his words: it is a project thatwould work on all scales, from bracelet to citywalls; it is a space but also a conceptual topology,the open/closed; it is a wall that encloses a placebut which is itself a liveable, walkable place.It is a piece of nature, but at the same time anapplication of technologically sophisticatedmaterials. In short, it is a device that prevents usfrom cataloguing, and that makes the boundariesbetween scales and disciplines harmless. It is notby chance that, if we were to look at it in a mirror- as must be done with Leonardo’s writing - itwould appear as a question mark.

1.Bulegato F., Polano S. (2004). Michele De Lucchi. Comincia qui e finisce là, p. 9. Milano: Electa. 2.D’Onofrio A., A conversation with Michele De Lucchi, p.31 of this catalogue.

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