Assemblage and Rituals

Abstract

False Mirror Office analyses its own architectural practice, exposing the connections between some of its recent projects, research activities and publications. The following text is based on the presentation led by Giovanni Glorialanza and Filippo Fanciotti (False Mirror Office).

False Mirror Office’s (FMO) work, being as multidisciplinary as somewhat devious, involves refining techniques for combining heterogeneous elements into assemblages in architecture, using pop-art’s method of transfiguration of form and meaning. FMO’s members conduct a rigorous initial phase of individual research before each design opportunity, uncovering any underlying themes that such project could imply in order to further explore them way after the assignment is completed. The exploration spectrum of those researches often extends beyond the disciplinary field of architecture, landing into cross-cutting issues; this is why in its research journals the complex representations of James R. Thompson Center’s, designed by the architect Helmut Jahn, Chicago 1980, easily appear next to Frances Glessner Lee’s dollhouses or the voyeuristic scenes in Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954). By juxtaposing and combining diverse elements, the natural mutability of the ever-changing referent in Architecture is further amplified: whereas the Doric capital caricatured at the Allen Memorial Art Museum, by Venturi and Scott-Brown (Ohio, 1977), still refer to elements disciplinarily belonging to architecture, it was precisely the encroachment of everyday-objects that demonstrated that ‘Alles Ist Architektur’ [1]. This oscillation between highbrow and inevitably lowbrow references makes the outcome of these assemblages distinctly autobiographical.

A first example of the application of these techniques can be observed in the project for a villa in the Roman countryside: a purely speculative exercise consisted of a three-part development. The first act consisted in grafting the floor plans of Roman villas with those typical of modern construction in the Roman countryside of today (Fig. 1), followed by a collage of places and characters associated with everyday-life in the Roman countryside; the third document presents a model of the villa, revealing the original forms of both architectures and some prominent representatives of the referential park from the collage, presented in a literal primordial broth, displayed in an elegant tureen.

Fig. 1.

Zuppa Romana (grafting), False Mirror Office, [2017].

A second attempt in architectural assemblages happened throughout the project to transform a neglected warehouse in the port of Trondheim into a public food-hall; the new exterior facade of the building was purely designed as a scenic backdrop, featuring the tail of a whale, a small boat, a mysterious chimney, and the profile of a riverfront bryggen. The proposal for a decommissioned building in Cuneo included irreverently positioned elements such as the golden palms from the Austrian Travel Agency, designed by Hans Hollein in Vienna (1978), and colossal versions of LEGO pine trees. Additionally, a grand-scale theft from the National Collegiate Football Hall of Fame, by Venturi and Scott Brown, in New Brunswick (1967) was incorporated, reduced to a mere form, ready for new functions (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2.

Frigo, False Mirror Office, [2020].

Studying those cases in which the technique of assemblage has been applied in architecture, it is impossible do overlook the handful of projects realized by the radical group UFO (Lapo Binazzi, Riccardo Foresi, Titti Maschietto, Carlo Bachi, Patrizia Cammeo), active in Florence between ‘68 and ‘78. FMO’s interest in the UFO’s work, born out of genuine curiosity, first took shape in the publication L’assemblaggio come testo figurativo per l’architettura [2] and was then further explored in the monograph UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECT for contemporary architecture, published by ACTAR and financed by the Italian Art Council of 2021.

While UFO performances aimed to subvert interactions between people and public space, at the domestic scale such rituals only intensify, further defining rigid rules in the division of spaces associated with living; the increasingly common practice of smart working ultimately introduces rituals related to negotium into the domestic space. These assumption inspired the project for a New post-pandemic habitat [3]; designed to accommodate multiple inhabitants, the habitat features semi-public devices provided for shared activities between small groups of inhabitants, while individual living units are designed to keep fundamental activities separate into poche obtained digging the perimetrical wall (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3.

Nuovo habitat post-pandemico, False Mirror Office, [2020].

Starting from these assumptions takes form also a device for the cult of otium within the domestic space, exposed first for the exhibition Italy: The New Domestic Landscape. New York 1972 / Venice 2020, held in Venice (2020) and then in Milan (Otiarum, Superattico, 2022) together with five additional votive temples, each dedicated to a distinct aspect of idleness in the domestic space.

The same shrine-like form finally became the object of production of a workshop called Station to Station (Monesiglio, 2021); in that occasion participants selected stories from the small village in Alta Langa, artfully misrepresented them, and elevated them to the status of myth by representing them within a diorama. At the climax of the workshop, the participants staged a procession through the streets of Monesiglio; by stopping at various significant spots in the village to display their dioramas, they intentionally enacted a profoundly lay version of the stations of the Cross (Fig. 4).

Fig. 4.

Station to station, Monesiglio, False Mirror Office, [2021].