2022
THE INNOCENT CHAIR AND OTHER STORIES. Milano Design Week 2022, Installation at Isola Design District.
An abandoned seller was activated for the installation as a place of fantasies and memories. The installation, infact, consists of a mere composition of ropes, bare wood, and shadows.
2022
THE INNOCENT CHAIR (and Other Stories). Installation at Konzepthaus Laboratorium, Thun, Switzerland.
Two men meet in an abandoned countryside in the shade of an olive tree, or perhaps in the shadow of a rusty sheet metal roof. The first man is a farmer. The second is a lawyer. The farmer needs help, and the lawyer works as a volunteer for an organization that reactivates land confiscated from the mafias and is there to advise the farmer on how to start a path to legality.
This scene is fictional, from Antonio Scarponi’s imaginative design process. But it is a clear image, resurfaced as he was working on a project for a mobile pavilion that could host this kind of activity in southern Italy, imagining this kind of encounter and this kind of relationship between two men or perhaps two brave women rebelling against their fate.
Scarponi wondered about the symbolic form of a chair, dropped into this context that he designed and where those two men or those two women, were supposed to meet. In this place, the Innocent Chair was born as a symbolic way not to accept the world but to transform the small part of it into our hands.
2022
TEMPIETTO DEL RAMARRO. Cork Oak Nursery for the Ramarro Association Caltagirone, Sicily, (under construction).
Tempietto del Ramarro is a nursery designed to be constructed with the exclusive use of roof battens in collaboration with architecture students to replace an existing greenhouse previously burned by arson.
The structure follows the simple logic and proportion of a "temple" to celebrate the holy spirits of the "genius loci" impersonated by the volunteers of the Ramarro Association who are protecting the natural forest from criminal arsons.
2020
TENUN IKAT SIKKA. Fashion Booth, Empowering Sikka's Weavers Community, Indonesia.
The fashion booth is an exhibition scenography device to store, transport and showcase the Ikat from Sikka products in multiple locations.
"Tenun Ikat Sikka" is an association that protects the practice, the tradition, the knowledge and the intellectual rights of the recently acknowledged Geographical Indication (GI) of the Ikat technique from Sikka Indonesia.
2020
DIGITAL WALDEN.
Resilient Strategies In The Digital Forest: A Pavilion Built With "As Found" Materials From The Zurich University Campus, By BA Design Students.
Based on the literary archetype of Walden by Henry Thoreau, students reflects on the meaning of freedom and the impact of digitalization on the future of work: the "digital forest" of our times.
The workshop focuses on designing and constructing a "hut" made of waste material found in the Zurich University Campus as a symbolic second "nature" of the digital era.
2020
UDATEGIA.
Temporary Greenhouse Pavilion, Institute for Basque Architecture, San Sabastian, Spain.
Udategia, in basque, means the place where summer is produced and kept.
This temporary pavilion was built in two and half days of pandemia in December 2020, with the help of a small group of talented, dedicated young architects on the Institute of Basque Architects terrace for the Food Hack Lab. The Pavilion will “produce” the “summer” and its products via automated hydroponics.
2020
JERICHO ROSE.
Concept for Festspiele Zurich.
The Jericho Rose is an event concept strategy for the involvement of the public during the Festspiele Zurich. The project consists of mobile and modular grandstands which could host workshops and temporary stores underneath. The modules can be assembled and create an arena to host the public for concerts or theatre shows or used independently as urban types of furniture.
2019
'AS FOUND': OPEN MOBILE KITCHEN.
Neighbourship Making via Informal Together Cooking.
The project aimed to activate BA design students to design and build mobile kitchen modules made exclusively with parts assembled "as found". Our work is conceived as a device to interweave a "new" neighbourhood using food as an intercultural language.
2019
LE CONFESSIONI DI CAGLIOSTRO. Moleskine Foundation Collection Acquisition.
"Le Confessioni di Cagliostro" is a notebook contribution to raise awareness on the theme of creativity as a tool for social change and to spread the culture of sharing and giving. It is now part of the Moleskine Foundation collection: pieces of work created by different authors and thinkers on Moleskine notebooks and donated to the Foundation to help support its activities.
2018
THE LIVING ARCHIVE.
Strategic Design Workshop for the Activation of the Olivetti's Heritage. Officine ICO, Ivrea, Italy.
The workshop's goal was to develop a vision for strategic and sustainable development of the Olivetti Factories within the frame of the newly acknowledged UNESCO site of Ivrea Industrial City of the 20th Century through a participatory process involving local and international stakeholders. The workshop led to a roadmap defined as the "Living Archive": a vision that sees the territory as the tangible and intangible archive of the Olivetti's heritage.
2018
JUNGFRAU PAVILION. Temporary Pavilion, Steffisburg, Switzerland.
The pavilion is conceived as an architectonic contribution to the iconographic tradition of the Jungfrau series initiated by Paul Klee, Arnold Böcklin, and Ferdinand Hodler and carried until today by many other artists.
2018
LA CITTÁ LIBERA.
Off-Grid Participatory Design City Making.
La Città Libera is a performative installation that aims to explore participatory "off-grid neighbourship" architectural forms.
La Città Libera consists of a toolbox that stimulates the general public's imagination to develop participative self-sufficient urbanization. The toolbox contains 1:50 architectural elements to assemble a hypothetical housing concept to host eight people at "Swiss living standards".