Valerio Olgiati

Valerio Olgiati inserts a loose cluster of white columns into the space of the Corderie. The stoic mass of the Corderie columns contrast with the more ephemeral new columns. Like a Greek temple there is just enough room to move around in the voids.
A space already replete with columns is filled with even more columns to heighten the awareness of the existing quality of the Corderie.
This installation is very much representative of the work of Olgiati. Each project is an exercise of intense focus on a specific element of architecture. This element might have to do with a space, an atmosphere, a material, a structure. What results is an artefact which embodies an intensity of thought. Believing in the universality of ideas and concepts as a starting point, and in the ability of architecture to bring a new consciousness to existing conditions, the foreign informs the familiar.
Promoting an interest in epistemology – going back to first principles in the study of architectural language and ideas – the distillation of thinking prior to action, the material quality of architecture, the rationale of structure, the Olgiati atelier is presented here adjacent to Experience of Space.
YF+SMcN