The imagination can take you anywhere

SERIES: Architecture in drawings that visualise and construct the habitus residing in the architect’s mind - Under the aegis of Orazio Carpenzano, Head of the Faculty of Architecture, Università La Sapienza in Rome
SPEAKER: Carmen Andriani
DATE: Thursday 6 July, 6 pm 
PLACE: Palazzo Venezia, Sala del Refettorio

Leonardo da Vinci argued that the artist holds the essence, presence and imagination of the universe first in his mind and then in his hands. The genesis of the architectural project also stems from the imagination of its creators, often encapsulated in a tangled web of initial sketches. These are signs of invention which, prompted by a request, lend form to the mind’s vision. They translate a concept, transforming it into an idea of space and are the first composition of the work. It is the role of the drawing then to untangle it all and prefigure what does not yet exist. The projects presented at this talk are diverse in nature but all lead back to recurrent keywords (tectonics, programmes, matter, movement, form/structure, incomplete, connections, void, light, space). Some Rome projects lie at the heart of this narration. On an itinerary based on references and free association, I will describe a journey through the heterogeneous and contradictory materials of the project and the diverse actions and hybrid manual and digital techniques that lead it to its completion. Some of these projects were built and others interrupted. All are viable when practising the material utopia of a possible reality. 

Biography

Carmen Andriani is an architect and professor of Architectural Design who alternates an academic profession with ongoing design activity, seen as applied research, in competitions and consultations at home and abroad. Invited as a design architect to several editions of the Venice Biennale, in 2008 she was one of five people invited to curate the Padiglione Italiano. In 2013 she won a career award at the Manifestazione Internazionale d’Arte Icastica. She has held talks in Italy and around the world on her work as an architect and has been invited to numerous exhibitions and workshops worldwide. Recently her projects and drawings have been exhibited at the Reggia di Caserta (2019), Palazzo Ducale in Urbino (2021), Museo Novecento in Florence (2021), Palazzo Gravina in Naples (2022) and Museo MAXXI in Rome (2022). She lives and works in Genoa, Rome and Milan.

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