Riccardo Blumer

Riccardo Blumer, architect and professor, operates in the manner of an inventor, a choreographer, a builder of mechanisms and beautiful functioning objects. Our first introduction to the work of his atelier was a series of bird cages made by students in wood and laid out in a line approximately 30 metres in length. Each student had to make a gap in the cage which would allow the bird to connect with its neighbour. The result was that birds flew along the full length of the interconnected cages which felt more like pieces of architecture, all different; a street terrace of birds.
We were impressed. Each year Blumer’s atelier collectively construct inventions and display them to the school as a performance, a grand finale of their great efforts and achievements. These explore architectural phenomena such as gravity, light, liquid and movement. For this Biennale Architettura you can directly experience one of seven mechanised inventions created by students, ‘metamorphosing’ given elements of architecture, in this case the liquid wall.
This wall is so thin it hardly exists and indeed when it does exist it is momentary. It is intriguing and beautiful, provocative and playful. Reminiscent of the Bauhaus experimentations and of the mechanical sculptures of Jean Tinguely, the magic of the metamorphosed butterfly, teaching us to wonder afresh.
YF+SMcN