[onceptual)evices
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2022

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. The Innocent Chair consists of an installation and a book containing the instructions to build ten dwelling devices, pursuing an idea of design that does not produce products but knowledge. Each object is a narrative that establishes an intimate relationship with the reader. Drawings, diagrams, and schematics will tell a visual poem of living made for things that one can build at one wish. Espousing this hypothesis, Antonio Scarponi searched for a humble and most easily worked construction material with which roofs, partitions, cellar doors, and the illusions and hopes of theatrical stages are built. Together with the Innocent Chair, the book contains instructions to build a hanger, a table, a bench, a deckchair, a couch, a table chair, a bookshelf, a cupboard, and a bed.
Installation

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.

2020

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. Thanks to its expandability, the grandstands are designed to create a shadowplay that recalls a Jericho Rose and reflect from underneath the art installation of the mirroring zeppelin by Prisca Baumann.
Architecture

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.

2020

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 Pavillion will will "produce" the "summer" and its products via automated hydroponics. The Pavillion has been realized and assembled on location with simple means and material. With a height of 540cm, 300cm of with and 350cm of length, the structure is built with small timber profiles covered with polypropylene panels to protect the food growing from wind and salty water. The pavilion is placed on the terrace of the Institute of the Basque Architects in the historical centre of San Sebastian, and it is facing the iconic beach of "la concha". The pavilion is designed to grow food and herbs, which will be offered to the public during small summer events.
Workshop

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

On the 4th of July 1845, Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) closed the door of his home behind himself and moved out in the forest for more than two years in a hut built with his own hands. He provided his individual needs independently with the only help of nature itself. In these two years, he wrote "Walden", a reflection on simple living in a natural environment: a critique at the capitalistic society of his times, articulated on the meaning of work versus living in wildlife as a means to transcendental growth. Almost two hundred years later, Walden remains one of the modern and post-modern times "arcadia" archetypes". Based on this literary archetype, students will reflect on the meaning of freedom and the impact of digitalization on the future of work: the "digital forest" of our times. The course will focus on constructing a "hut" made of waste material found exclusively in the Zurich University Campus. The current condition of work and independence goes far beyond the office and home, analogue and digital, work and leisure, as all these space and times categories are blurred and meshed one into another. The course will be therefore designed in week blocks that interweave all these conditions. The first week will be focused on the concept development and planning of the hut made out of material discarded at Toni Areal. The second week will be spent in Cima Norma, Ticino, in direct contact with the forest, and different construction structures will be tested with material discarded by the forest. In the third week, the knowledge gained in the forest will be applied to the development of the hut in Zurich University Campus. In the fourth week, the hut will be finalized and installed on the campus ramp. Students will work in teams to design and construct a digital and analogue space, using discarded materials and movements body tracking technologies as a practical and theoretical reflection on the individual's resiliency and their communities in the "digital forest" of our times.
Workshop

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

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. The booth can be used in multiple ways based on the different degrees of its opening and functioning at the same time to showcase and as a cabin to try on the various garments. The outer side is also designed to place removable shelves and extend the showcase surface when needed. The project has been realized onsite in Indonesia, empowering local knowledge and resources. The weaver community initiated the association's mission to make the weaving of Ikat from Sikka a source of sustainable livelihood by providing services for weavers and business actors. Especially the weaving groups/studios aimed to protect Tenun Ikat Sikka products from motifs and name plagiarism by factory-made products that are not original Ikat from Sikka. The project received the support of the Indonesian government, the Indonesian-Swiss Intellectual Property Project – ISIP. In addition, the association was formed thanks to the Sahabat Cipta Foundation, and the "Tenun Ikat Sikka" was proposed to obtain legal protection.
Design

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.

2019

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. Students learned to weld, screw, cut, and most importantly, reach out for help, materials, support, and finally enjoy and share their work with others and bring an intercultural neighbour together via food. All five modules have been realized only by assembling what students could find. Thanks to the support of the IKEA Stiftung, Zurich, four "eat and meet" events have been organized involving the food waste Zurich community. A collection of different nomadic bread has been cooked and offered as an intercultural degustation. The collection will included “farinata”, “piadina”, “injara”, “samuna”, “focaccia” and others. The mobile kitchen modules have been designed and built by the BA design students of the Zurich University of the Arts mentored by Clemens Winkler and Antonio Scarponi. The cooking devices are now part of the social design arsenal of Hic et Nunc at Fogo Areal.
Urban Activation / Workshop

'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" 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. Notebooks are for me a place of freedom through which you “become” who you are, crossing the pages like glades where magical rites are consumed. These drawings are the patient search for a source where colours, signs, ideas and visions, materialize as a small crack of playful freedom stolen from reason. I think of these drawings as a look that penetrates the thick and impregnable walls of a fortress as the Rocca di San Leo in the cell of Cagliostro. The Moleskine's collection reflects the variety, wealth and complexity of contemporary creative thinking, through the largest collection of author notebooks of our time. It gathers the contributions of artists, designers, architects, musicians, filmmakers, illustrators, intellectuals and philosophers, who – page after page – have filled notebooks with thoughts, sketches, images, often turning them into artifacts completely different from the original. The notebook is the device, the limit, the origin. The Foundation is committed to showcasing the collection at international art events, festivals, exhibitions, and Biennales to give as much visibility to the artists as possible and, at the same time, to sustain fundraising initiatives.
Collection Acquisition

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 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 on the 1st of July 2018 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. A first workshop was held in the first extension of the Olivetti Factories designed by Figini and Pollini in 1934 in the so-called "Salone dei 2000", where the "Living Archive" concept was developed. This concept was further developed in a second workshop that had led to a Horizon 2020 project proposal application.
Workshop

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

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. Characteristically for this kind of works, the object’s shape is inspired by the mountain panorama. The Pavillion is designed for the Bernese community of steffisburg to host different open-air cultural events of the triennial festival ‘art container, With its 250 square meters of covered surface and its 9 meters height, the ‘jungfrau pavilion’ has Jungfrau, an architectural scale developed in collaboration with the local authorities who carried the project to completion fundraising to technical engineering. Designed as a theatrical device, the structure presents itself as a lay cathedral surrounded by rapeseed fields to host daily liturgies such as concerts, speeches, gastronomic degustations and open leisure activities that celebrate the sublimeness of the alpine Bernese landscape and territory. The pavilion features ad-hoc furniture realized with concrete casting boards to match the surrounding yellow rapeseed flower fields. The wooden roof structure consists of an ‘open truss’ system that allows the suspension of a rooftop membrane that inverts the load forces and optimizes the natural structure resistance performance of the wood construction. The pavilion is designed as a temporary structure that can be efficiently rebuilt in different contexts and host various cultural open-air events.
Architecture

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 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". The toolbox provides a primary spatial taxonomy that allows exploring the syntax of a self-sufficient architectural language: walls, volumes, columns, different roof shapes options, windows, photovoltaic panels, phitodepuration surfaces, solar panels, an edible garden and a tree. Each participant will be provided with a toolbox to "develop" an urban plot next to their hypothetical neighbours. In this way, participants will explore how collaborative development can maximize self-sufficient strategies and solutions. The workshop can be held with the different mixed target group for a minimum of forty-five minutes, depending on the participants' interest and age. La Città Libera explores the long tradition of high-quality, affordable housing construction initiated by many authors since the 1950s, introducing the participatory element of space construction and its' and energetic sustainability. The research started after the Italian Pavillion commission of an off-grid pavilion to activate land confiscated from the Mafia in the south of Italy for the exhibition "Taking Care" at XV Venice Biennale in 2016. After that, "La Città Libera" has been prototyped on several occasions and within different institutions, including ETH Wohnforun Zurich and FHNW Academy of Art and Design. The current formula has been presented as a "vermittlung" concept in the Swiss Arts Awards' architecture section in Art Basel in 2018. Each day of the event, four workshops have been held to engage the public and explore the challenges of off-grid architecture and its consequences.
Architecture

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".

2017

Hesje, in Norvegian, is a particular type of primitive structure still used today by fisherman to dry fish near the beach. Inspired by the simple and yet elegant archetypical frame of the Hasje, a pavilion was conceived, designed and constructed in the asylum seeker centre of Kaspar, Norway, during a two weeks workshop with six theatre scenography BA students from the Norwegian Theater Academy and the kind support of Kaspar's Asylum Seekers centre. The project aimed to confront scenography students with the humanitarian emergency of Kaspar centre through the design and construction of a place, with the centre's inhabitants to host events and celebrate life in different seasons of the year.
Workshop

HESJE.
Temporary Pavilion. Participatory process with Kaspar's Center Asylum Seekers and Norwegian Theater Academy Scenography Students, Norway.

Hesje, in Norvegian, is a particular type of primitive structure still used today by fisherman to dry fish near the beach. Inspired by the simple and yet elegant archetypical frame of the Hasje, a pavilion was conceived, designed and constructed in the asylum seeker centre of Kaspar, Norway.

2017

Cosenza Selva Oscura is a project held within the Landworks Calabria workshop Series, conceived for the reactivation of the historical centre of Cosenza. The project features international architecture and landscape students activating the inhabitants' participative involvement to upgrade a degraded square and construct a small temporary pavilion.
Workshops

LANDWORKS CALABRIA/ COSENZA (SELVA OSCURA). Landscape installation for the Activation of the Historical Center of Cosenza, Italy.

Cosenza Selva Oscura is a project held within the Landworks Calabrina workshop Series, conceived for the reactivation of the historical centre of Cosenza. The project features the participative involvement of international architecture and landscape students of the inhabitants to upgrade a degraded square and the construction of a small temporary pavillion.

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Antonio Scarponi / [onceptual)evices 
Hermetschloostrasse 70, #2.16
CH_8048 Zurich. 
© ANTONIO SCARPONI 2022