Ferpect

Client : XXIII UIA World Congress of Architecture
Collaborators : Thomas Merlin - 3D Computing
Field : Temporary installation
Location : Piazza Castello - Torino
Scale : 100 m²
Schedule : Competition 2008

The competition to carry out a new UIA info point is an occasion to focus on the most complete and deep meaning of the overall theme of the XXIII UIA Congress “Transmitting Architecture”, where space itself will be built to talk to the surrounding area and to people moving around it. An idea which is horizontal, democratic of urban space, in which people can meet, give and get information, stop and rest, but also an object that through its materials and applied technologies communicates that no taw materials will be used, that each element will be recyclable and reusable and that, after all, after UIA Congress, this element can be moved to other public areas still offering quality and relaxing shade.

Our project features an architectural composition made of chairs. This composition, as a construction site, is invading by spots the central square of Turin. Following this open composition, architectural forms tend to be passageways that integrate along the event functions.

The inner scheme of specific groups of chair is a metaphor of the individual, part of a societal group, as an actor of democracy and a builder of its landscape. The project appears as a dedicated space to speak and exchange about the City and the Architecture.

Chairs are designed so they can assemble one with another and therefore become walls or roof, but also be part of the communicating social area of the Info-point.

Further than just being a temporary architectural composition made of a piles of chairs, this project narrates the cycle of the industrial production of this single constructive element, before while and after the exhibition: from its generation until its recycled use:
 Made from a perforated metal sheet, it requires only one computer file for a laser cut, to be then assembled. The chair is designed to be produced through today’s industrial standards, as simple and low cost as possible.
 The simplicity of the production allows us to think of a local production, as close as possible from the exhibition site.
 At the end of the exhibition, each single piece of construction returns to be a chair and therefore spread out as part of Turin’s own urban furniture. The basic component of the exhibition will have a second life.

Our project offers a volumetric vision of how dialogue articulates spaces, by the use of a public icon: the chair. This concept gives us the opportunity to demonstrate how intricate disciplines and scales can be in nowadays architecture.

Athmosphere concepts and reference images

Competition results

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