Andrea Branzi

La Metropoli Latina

Andrea Branzi

1+1+1
A project by Elena Quarestani
with Marco Sammicheli

April - May 2019

Andrea Branzi

La Metropoli Latina

Andrea Branzi

1+1+1
A project by Elena Quarestani
with Marco Sammicheli

April - May 2019

La Metropoli Latina - Andrea Branzi ©Giovanni Hänninen

OPENING HOURS

from April 3 to May 11
Wednesday to Saturday from 15:00 to 19:00 and by appointment

Guided tours:
Saturday 11 May – at 4:00 and 6:0opm
Info & booking: info@assab-one.org

Andrea Branzi, architect, protagonist of the Radical movement and of the New Italian design, was recently celebrated at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm with the prestigious Rolf Schock award in the Visual Arts 2018 for his long and meaningful involvement in the debate about cities, architecture and design. As a contemporary humanist, in this exhibition Branzi reflects on an arcane and contemporary art, more precisely Latin art, paying tribute to a Pompeii that has remained “intact” in its most intimate and poetic dimension, the domestic one.

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Pompeii is a city where the exterior architecture has collapsed, but interior architecture has been saved. This Latin Metropolis as we know it is in fact a theoretical metropolis, in the sense that it comprises not only the ruins of monuments (triumphal arches, aqueducts, forums, circuses, basilicas) but also, and above all, an almost-intact fabric of private, interior, domestic spaces. Dimly lit rooms, whose frescoed walls could be explored by lantern- or torch-light, narrated myths, divinities, sex and disturbing fragments of dreamlike scenarios, mysterious narratives of a literary world incomprehensible to us, and precisely for this reason fascinating.

The exhibition collects canvas panels (retouched with chalk by hand), models and designs created over time as material for reflecting on an arcane art (which Latin art is) that is disturbing for its modernity, the result of a Civilisation where everything has collapsed, save for the works of its poets: Virgil, Orazio, Ovidio, Lucano and all those who narrated and painted the loves, the birds and fruit, the passions and the secrets of a domestic life so similar to our own.

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Biography

Andrea Branzi, architect and designer, was born in Florence, where he graduated from university; he has lived and worked in Milan since 1974. He deals with industrial and experimental design, architecture, urban planning, teaching and cultural promotion. He is the author of many books on history and design theory, published in several countries; in the last few years, important monographs on his work have been published. Until graduating in 1966, he was part of the avant-garde movement of “Radical Architecture”. In 1982, he co-founded and directed Domus Academy, the first post-graduate design school in Italy. As a Full Professor, he has been President of the Course of Studies in Interior Design at the Faculty of Design of the Milan Polytechnic. He has won three Compasso d’Oro awards, one of which for his career. In 2008, he received the Laurea Honoris Causa in Design from the Sapienza University of Rome and in the same year he was appointed Honorary Member of the Royal Design for Industry in London. In 2017, the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris dedicated a permanent room to its work. In 2018, the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm awarded him the Rolf Schock Prize for the Visual Arts.

  • La Metropoli Latina - Andrea Branzi ©Giovanni Hänninen
  • La Metropoli Latina - Andrea Branzi ©Giovanni Hänninen
  • La Metropoli Latina - Andrea Branzi
  • La Metropoli Latina - Andrea Branzi
  • La Metropoli Latina - Andrea Branzi
  • La Metropoli Latina - Andrea Branzi
  • La Metropoli Latina - Andrea Branzi

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