PREMIO MAGGIA 2019 - FIRMITAS

The force of gravity reappropriates the superfluous and the waste by selecting what is rubble and what is ruin. The ruin, thus returned to its original condition, rises to an ideal model. It suspends itself, it frees itself from form and function; like the animal skeleton that at the moment of death frees itself from its organic superstructures. Talking about ruins and the unfinished implicitly places the attention on the firmitas, what is not seen but necessary, remains. Firmitas is solidity, it is skeleton, it is structure. The construction of architecture becomes the very limit of the structure and ruins its rediscovery. The ostentation of the structural frame becomes a project, because it is not in the choice of a possible architectural device that our research focuses, but rather in the analysis of the structure as a generating principle of space, a first programmatic dissolution. It is a way of thinking, more than an action it is a strategy. Only starting from the rule, therefore, is it possible to revive these skeletons in the imminent need to turn to them to reactivate their relationship with the project, to trigger the practices of re-appropriation of places and thus Re-equip the ruin.

​

“There is no reason that this creature, the living skeleton, unknown, that I know, to art, should not become a symbol of life itself”1

​

1 Keith Chesterton, U. Cao, L. Romagni, Recycle Italy, Scheletri – Recycling of unfinished structures, 2016​

 

​

​

​

​

architects . Gino Baldi, Serena Comi, Francesco Baggio
location . Fondazione Sella, Biella

client . Premio Federico Maggia 2019

status . Finalists

publication . Premio Maggia 2019

photo. Baldi G.

​