10 Hints From HangarBicocca: a Door, a Wall & Other Fundamentals of Architecture as You’ve Never Seen Them Before.

Can architecture exist in harmony with nature, and assume soft and indefinite forms? New visions and unexpected interpretations of building’s basic elements are at the core of “Architecture as Art” exhibition curated by Nina Bassoli and Pierluigi Nicolin at Pirelli HangarBicocca in Milan. The show, which began as one of Milan’s Fuorisalone events, is a part of the return of Triennale International Exhibition which includes dozens of shows running all over the city of Milan until September 2016.

Below are the most inspiring, surprising and sustainable hints from HangaBiccoca we spotted during out visit at the beginning of Milan Design Week 2016.

The “Garden Ground” installation by Michel Desvigne Paysagiste. All photography by Maria Novozhilova.

The “Garden Ground” installation by Michel Desvigne Paysagiste.

(1) Have you ever seen growing post-and-beam structure? The “Garden Ground” installation by Michel Desvigne Paysagiste is an architecture made of 307 real young trees, planted in pots and arranged in an orthogonal pattern. Complete by light bamboo bracings, “Garden Ground” provide a shaded area and a green portico through which visitors walk on their way to the Pirelli Hangar Biccoca. It wouldn’t be bad to have such green structures in our actual cities.

Special “Entrance” created by Maria Giuseppina Grasso Cannizzo.

(2) 1,152 metal pipes of different lengths and diameter hanging from the ceiling is a very special “Entrance” created by Maria Giuseppina Grasso Cannizzo. It reinterprets the idea of a gate as an ambiguous space that divides and unites rooms at the same moment. Made of suspended metallic tubes, it is also a sound installation to be activated by the visitors passing through.

“Sidewalk” designed by El Equipo de Mazzanti.

“Sidewalk” designed by El Equipo de Mazzanti.

(3) “Sidewalk” designed by El Equipo de Mazzanti is a tunnel made of white elastic fabric stretched over a wooden frame. Through these translucent walls and ceiling visitors can see and be seen. The whole structure is playful manifest to soft, flexible and deformable boundary between inside and outside.

“Bricolage” by Amateur Architecture Studio.

“Bricolage” by Amateur Architecture Studio.

“Bricolage” by Amateur Architecture Studio.

(4) “Bricolage” by Amateur Architecture Studio is an inhabitable wall. Made of bricks it is an “in-progress” installation, that one can enter inside, explore its inner structure, observe it incomplete details. Is it a result of a construction or a destruction? It is not clear. In either case, it is a strong message that a solid wall made of solid bricks can be light, permeable and has a potential of being a stand-alone inhabitable structure.

Studio Mumbai’s “Portico”.

(5) Studio Mumbai’s “Portico” is a provoking experiment on gravity and monumentality. Pillars are set directly on the floor with no fixing. What is more, it is built out of Chennai granite quarries, which is still extracted entirely by hand and using just few tools. Therefore visible traces of cuts and marks left by the processes of extraction virtually transport visitors into the stratified and dusty landscape of the quarries.

“Sharing” by Rural Studio.

“Sharing” by Rural Studio.

“Sharing” by Rural Studio.

(6) “Sharing” by Rural Studio is an amphitheater space made entirely from a recycled and recyclable paper. The tiers have been created by stacking bales of paper for recycling, borrowed for the duration of the exhibition from a company in the vicinity of Milan. “Sharing” is a work that involves no waste and that raises the question of a responsible and sustainable approach to design.

“Shelter” by Rural Urban Framework.

“Shelter” by Rural Urban Framework.

(7) “Shelter” by Rural Urban Framework is built of the 3 recycled materials that the office always applies to their projects in rural China: simple bricks, hollowed concrete blocks typical of rural Chinese architecture, and silvered tiles employed in a school in the province of Guangdong. The pavilion showcases studio’s approach accustomed working on social projects under emergency conditions in rural China, and using common construction materials and techniques.

“Roof” by nArchitects.

(8) “Roof” by nArchitects is a demonstration of the concept of “almost building”. It is an incomplete and dynamic structure that is open to the landscape and to appropriation or completion on the part of users. Six interlaced aluminium vaults are attached to a triangular wooden platform, forming a permeable enclosure around an empty central space suited to performances.

Studio Albori‘s “Sustainability”.

(9) Studio Albori‘s “Sustainability” is a half-covered pavilion based on the reutilization of a batch of large packing crates, assembled to form a sort of a large porch. At the end of the exhibition, the project will be re-used: the same materials will be reassembled as a part of a school of Italian for refugees and migrants.

“Home” by Atelier Bow-Wow.

(10) Made of such sophisticated materials as wooden frame taken from a Kazuo Shinohara’s Uncompleted House (1970) and William Morris’s Willow Boughs pattern wallpaper (1887), there was still something missing in this “Home” by Atelier Bow-Wow. A real home indeed is much more than just nicely finished walls. A tiny toothbrush put next to a small wash basin completes this huge and otherwise empty space.

“Y” installation by Carsten Holler.

“Y” installation by Carsten Holler.

(A little bit extra) The “Y” installation with its intermittent lights recalls an amusement park. Set at the beginning of the exhibition dedicated to the works of Carsten Holler, “Y” is a forked corridor that opens up before the visitors, forcing them to question which direction to take. A experiment based on visual perception with a luminous spiral that attracts or repulses visitors to make a certain choice.

[Photography by Maria Novozhilova.]