The secret life of imperfect architectures and the foundation rite of another planet earth

TITLE: The secret life of imperfect architectures and the foundation rite of another planet earth
SPEAKER: Cherubino Gambardella
DATE: Thursday, May 26,  2022 at 6 pm
LOCATION: Sala del Refettorio

I spent thirty five years of my life passionately studying architecture and its wonderful system of rules and norms that gave it its harmonic perfection and admirable flexibility. I understood, then, that the main point for me was not recognizing the passing of time and building for myself a mighty and imperfect biased fresco where my tools, the tools of my profession reside. The thing is that this huge ambition of mine had to pass through the customs clearance of a detachment from the rules when - instead - the whole architecture is full of licenses and variations starting from an adaptation by analogy or opposition of an instrument that has never changed for millennia. Well, a certain anxiety, haste, combined with a bulimic passion for the whole built world, has shifted my attention towards an amnesia driven by the rules of the project and an immense attraction towards everything that seemed forgotten, leftover, out of interest, the result of questions and orders that seemed more bad chanes than real opportunities. I understood that only through this imaginative elasticity I could be a happy man and I put myself at the service of the error by generating a collection of architectural works that together seem to found another planet earth, a smiling planet of the right peace that can also arise from the worst intentions.

Cherubino Gambardella was born in Naples in 1962. He is an architect, full professor of Architecural Design at the Vanvitelli University where he directs the master's degree course in architecture. He is part of the college of teachers of the PHD in Architectural Composition of the University of Rome "La Sapienza". He has taught in various Italian universities (Rome, Naples, Ascoli Piceno, Venice), has lectured at the Cornell University, the Catholic University of Washington, has taught at the IIT in Chicago, at the Bauhaus in Dessau, at Miami University. He has written over twenty books and published articles in the most prestigious international journals. He has won numerous architectural competitions and awards in various countries around the world. His works have been exhibited at the MOMA in New York, the Venice Biennale, the Milan Triennale, the Chicago Biennale as well as in various European, American and Asian institutions, foundations and museums.