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Exhibition and Performance @Campo

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RELIQUARY

Exhibition and book

@Campo

Rome,

2016

Mankind’s fascination with historic artefacts provides the necessary framework to allow us to cope with our collective existential fears – to, in short, comprehend the magnitude and terror of the natural world. Together they provide a codified, iconographic language which both comforts and instructs us in ways to behave, both alone and together. Throughout history knowledge has been chronicled, transmitted and distilled in the form of myths and narratives embedded within architectural fabric.

GENESIS Extraction is a geological process. The Earth is in a continual process of exhuming and stratifying, pulling apart and colliding with itself. The reconfiguration of excavated material (design) is a pursuit which mankind has utilised above all other activities; we have, for centuries, systematically taken from the ground, translated that which we wrest into objects of use, before burying it once again.

METAMORPHOSIS Reconfiguration might also be read as manufacture. From raw material we make tools to create more of the same – once it is taken from the ground and imbued with meaning beyond its material value, it is changed beyond former utility. This gradual and ever expanding repertoire of objects, forms and tools represents a fascination with evolution – be it of ourselves, the spaces in which we reside, or the environments that we distance ourselves from. The larger desire to manage and configure the natural world—by carving, enclosing and overlaying—is ongoing and, to a certain degree, inevitable.

TRANSLATION The translation material hewn or extracted from the ground—be it stone, clay or ore—is an occupation which is being continuously refined. Two dimensional surfaces bely the three dimensional world, and our instruments of measurement allow us to scale the environment in order to imagine and inscribe new configurations of and for it. The act of translation mediates between the virtual sphere and its implications for the real world.

BIRTH The built world is manifested through the strain and labour of both man and machine. The core elements of architecture—a wall, a roof, an arch, or a column—are able to orchestrate the natural environment and bend it into a comfortable, useful human habitat. Once an idea has been conceived, refined and made buildable the process of nurturing it into reality begins.

LIFE Once a collection of elements have been choreographed into structure, the resultant spaces are occupied. The building, therefore, is subsumed into the fabric of a city and threaded into its civic and quotidian life. It begins to facilitate coexistence, exclusion, privacy, and the public life of individuals.

DEATH As with all things, a lifespan is finite – and often expedited by poor design (consider the conscious act of planned obsolescence). Fatigue, volatility, and irrelevance lead to collapse (a natural end), while others are purposefully put to death: an execution which, by nature of its scale, demands both patience and preparation. The elements of the building’s design and construction are dissolved before they are salvaged and reclaimed.

PROCESSION All life ends ceremoniously. In the case of a building, one configuration has come to pass and another begins; processes of fragmentation and translocation disperse the elements which once comprised a whole. Most are taken to landfill to be fed back into the ground while some are repurposed. Both fates are symbolic: the act of carrying from one place to another should be read as a ritual.

ARCHAEOLOGY Methodically ordered from a chaos of rubble (landfill), individual elements begin to speak of their former use. Set upon and aside from an abstracted topography, they are realigned to a grid in order to find clarity. The passage of time imbues even the most mundane objects with meaning beyond their function or their form, and it is here that we find interest. They represent something beyond our immediate understanding of the world around us.

RELIQUIARY This manufactured landscape entwines multiple worlds into one. As an edifice of repurposed relics, this fragmented and arbitrary terrain becomes a single codified heterogenous landscape. It is a museum of redundant matter scavenged, salvaged, positioned and resurrected as a ruin.

Directed by

OMMX

with

James Taylor Foster

Photos
Illustrations

Exhibition and book

@Campo

Rome

2016

Mankind’s fascination with historic artefacts provides the necessary framework to allow us to cope with our collective existential fears – to, in short, comprehend the magnitude and terror of the natural world. Together they provide a codified, iconographic language which both comforts and instructs us in ways to behave, both alone and together. Throughout history knowledge has been chronicled, transmitted and distilled in the form of myths and narratives embedded within architectural fabric.


GENESIS Extraction is a geological process. The Earth is in a continual process of exhuming and stratifying, pulling apart and colliding with itself. The reconfiguration of excavated material (design) is a pursuit which mankind has utilised above all other activities; we have, for centuries, systematically taken from the ground, translated that which we wrest into objects of use, before burying it once again.


METAMORPHOSIS Reconfiguration might also be read as manufacture. From raw material we make tools to create more of the same – once it is taken from the ground and imbued with meaning beyond its material value, it is changed beyond former utility. This gradual and ever expanding repertoire of objects, forms and tools represents a fascination with evolution – be it of ourselves, the spaces in which we reside, or the environments that we distance ourselves from. The larger desire to manage and configure the natural world—by carving, enclosing and overlaying—is ongoing and, to a certain degree, inevitable.


TRANSLATION The translation material hewn or extracted from the ground—be it stone, clay or ore—is an occupation which is being continuously refined. Two dimensional surfaces bely the three dimensional world, and our instruments of measurement allow us to scale the environment in order to imagine and inscribe new configurations of and for it. The act of translation mediates between the virtual sphere and its implications for the real world.


BIRTH The built world is manifested through the strain and labour of both man and machine. The core elements of architecture—a wall, a roof, an arch, or a column—are able to orchestrate the natural environment and bend it into a comfortable, useful human habitat. Once an idea has been conceived, refined and made buildable the process of nurturing it into reality begins.


LIFE Once a collection of elements have been choreographed into structure, the resultant spaces are occupied. The building, therefore, is subsumed into the fabric of a city and threaded into its civic and quotidian life. It begins to facilitate coexistence, exclusion, privacy, and the public life of individuals.


DEATH As with all things, a lifespan is finite – and often expedited by poor design (consider the conscious act of planned obsolescence). Fatigue, volatility, and irrelevance lead to collapse (a natural end), while others are purposefully put to death: an execution which, by nature of its scale, demands both patience and preparation. The elements of the building’s design and construction are dissolved before they are salvaged and reclaimed.


PROCESSION All life ends ceremoniously. In the case of a building, one configuration has come to pass and another begins; processes of fragmentation and translocation disperse the elements which once comprised a whole. Most are taken to landfill to be fed back into the ground while some are repurposed. Both fates are symbolic: the act of carrying from one place to another should be read as a ritual.


ARCHAEOLOGY Methodically ordered from a chaos of rubble (landfill), individual elements begin to speak of their former use. Set upon and aside from an abstracted topography, they are realigned to a grid in order to find clarity. The passage of time imbues even the most mundane objects with meaning beyond their function or their form, and it is here that we find interest. They represent something beyond our immediate understanding of the world around us.


RELIQUIARY This manufactured landscape entwines multiple worlds into one. As an edifice of repurposed relics, this fragmented and arbitrary terrain becomes a single codified heterogenous landscape. It is a museum of redundant matter scavenged, salvaged, positioned and resurrected as a ruin.


Directed by

OMMX

with

James Taylor Foster

Illustrations

Sabrina Morreale

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This is Tooltip!
lemonot

Sabrina Morreale, AA Dipl
Lorenzo Perri, AA Dipl (Hons)

London / Prato

projects@lemonot.co.uk

ABOUT

This is Tooltip!

Sabrina Morreale and Lorenzo Perri are architects, educators and founding partners of Lemonot – a duo for spatial and relational practices, architecture and performative arts. We graduated together at the Architectural Association and we’re now based between London and Italy.

Our projects re-invent the relationship between urban fabric and human rituals through a wide range of media: pavilions, exhibitions, short films and designed performances. We relentlessly seek new forms of togetherness, with a contextual yet transterritorial approach that aims to detect, celebrate and trigger the spontaneous theatre of everyday life. 

We experiment with the language of artistic strategies in public space, empowering alternative narratives and unexpected interactions – to initiate unconventional acts of place-making. We explore how architects can contribute to a peculiar reinterpretation of the city, defining novel 1:1 experiences through short and long-term occupational strategies. Dealing with multiple stakeholders at the same time, we often intervene as both facilitators and designers – constructing supporting spatial structures to make things happen.

Our constant engagement in academia is a crucial part of Lemonot. In 2018-19, we taught as Adjunct Professors at INDA in Bangkok and we’ve been Programme Heads of the AA Visiting School El Alto (Bolivia). Lorenzo taught at the University of Applied Arts Vienna  (dieAngewandte) in Architectural Studio 1 from 2020 to 2023, while Sabrina is currently Studio Master in the Foundation Course at the AA in London. Together, we now lead the Architectural Design Studio 7: Convivial-ism at the Royal College of Art in London. 

We collaborate with several cultural institution – including Arquine, La Biennale di Venezia, DPR Barcelona, LINA European Architecture Platform, S AM Basel, Architecture at the Edge (West Ireland) – and our projects have been exhibited and awarded internationally: among the others, at the Young Talent Architecture Award 2016, at the ATT19 Gallery in Bangkok, at the RIBA, at Vienna Design Week, at Bangkok Design Week, at Milan Design Week, at Archifest Singapore 2019, at Mextropoli 2021 in Mexico City, at FAR-Architecture Festival of Rome 2022 and at CAFx Copenhagen Architecture Film Festival 2023.

Furthermore, Lemonot is one of the 9 selected architectural practices for the Padiglione Italia – curated by Fosbury Architecture – of the Venice Architecture Biennale 2023, and Sabrina has been appointed as the 2024 Enel Foundation Italian Fellow in Architecture at the American Academy in Rome.

Lina Fellows 2022/2023

“Spaziale” – Padiglione Italia, Venice Architecture Biennale, 2023

close-40
This is Tooltip!
lemonot

Sabrina Morreale, AA Dipl
Lorenzo Perri, AA Dipl (Hons)

London, Vienna, Stockholm, La Paz and Italy

projects@lemonot.co.uk

ABOUT

This is Tooltip!

Sabrina Morreale and Lorenzo Perri are architects, educators and founding partners of Lemonot – a duo for spatial and relational practices, architecture and performative arts. We graduated together at the Architectural Association and we’re now based between London and Italy.

Our projects re-invent the relationship between urban fabric and human rituals through a wide range of media: pavilions, exhibitions, short films and designed performances. We relentlessly seek new forms of togetherness, with a contextual yet transterritorial approach that aims to detect, celebrate and trigger the spontaneous theatre of everyday life. 

We experiment with the language of artistic strategies in public space, empowering alternative narratives and unexpected interactions – to initiate unconventional acts of place-making. We explore how architects can contribute to a peculiar reinterpretation of the city, defining novel 1:1 experiences through short and long-term occupational strategies. Dealing with multiple stakeholders at the same time, we often intervene as both facilitators and designers – constructing supporting spatial structures to make things happen.

Our constant engagement in academia is a crucial part of Lemonot. In 2018-19, we taught as Adjunct Professors at INDA in Bangkok and we’ve been Programme Heads of the AA Visiting School El Alto (Bolivia). Lorenzo taught at the University of Applied Arts Vienna  (dieAngewandte) in Architectural Studio 1 from 2020 to 2023, while Sabrina is currently Studio Master in the Foundation Course at the AA in London. Together, we now lead the Architectural Design Studio 7: Convivial-ism at the Royal College of Art in London. 

We collaborate with several cultural institution – including Arquine, La Biennale di Venezia, DPR Barcelona, LINA European Architecture Platform, S AM Basel, Architecture at the Edge (West Ireland) – and our projects have been exhibited and awarded internationally: among the others, at the Young Talent Architecture Award 2016, at the ATT19 Gallery in Bangkok, at the RIBA, at Vienna Design Week, at Bangkok Design Week, at Milan Design Week, at Archifest Singapore 2019, at Mextropoli 2021 in Mexico City, at FAR-Architecture Festival of Rome 2022 and at CAFx Copenhagen Architecture Film Festival 2023.

Furthermore, Lemonot is one of the 9 selected architectural practices for the Padiglione Italia – curated by Fosbury Architecture – of the Venice Architecture Biennale 2023, and Sabrina has been appointed as the 2024 Enel Foundation Italian Fellow in Architecture at the American Academy in Rome.

Lina Fellows 2022/2023

“Spaziale” – Padiglione Italia, Venice Architecture Biennale, 2023