Anno Tropico

The exhibition itinerary is organized on different levels. Drawings, models and a video establish a dialogue with a selection of finished objects. These objects mark an important passage in the designers’ practice, closer to the industrial sphere than to crafts. At the same time, the working models confirm that the procedure and approach are still based on intuition and experimentation.

The models narrate the path that comes prior to the invention of the finished objects: dichroic glass, optical lenses and a parabolic mirror, assembled with industrial materials like bricks and iron rods, shape the light, generating reflections and shadows in the space. On the walls, 3D renderings printed on millimeter paper reproduce details of the objects on display, superimposed on graphics and numerical data drawn with a pencil.

The details of the lamps are isolated and described from close and unusual vantage points, while the lines that define their forms seem to extend, becoming hypothetical axes of diagrams that allude to an exponential consumption of energy: digital modeling is not used as a tool of simulation and clarity, but instead makes the objects barely recognizable and even vaguely grotesque. Rather than having an informative function regarding questions linked to environmental issues, the compositions and the data have the clear purpose of triggering a relation between the designer’s profession and his implicit participation in consumption and exploitation of natural resources.

The whole project is inserted in an environmental situation, which through the construction of wall-diaphragms corresponds to several windows screens and modulates the intensity of daylight. The nature of this work transforms not just the architecture but also the functioning of the exhibition space, in which the opening hours will vary depending on seasonal changes of the lighting.