A Matter of Perception - Tradition & Technology 2016

After the success of last year, MoscaPartners is back together with DAMN ° to occupy and transform Palazzo Litta during the Milan Design Week with some of the greatest exponents of international design. Eternal Ivica has been part of it..

The third edition of "A Matter of Perception" has seen renewed the collaboration for the second year in a row between MoscaPartners and DAMN ° in the realization of a group exhibition on the theme "Tradition & Technology" - which took place during the Fuorisalone in the 5VIE district in Palazzo Litta.

The courtyard of the Palace, the fulcrum of the event, was reinterpreted by architect Diébédo Francis Kéré, born in Burkina Faso and active today in Berlin with his own studio. The installation is a conceptual elaboration of the typical African village, circumscribed by a raised platform and surrounded by a landscape of locally grown reeds. The installation wanted to be a welcoming place, a place where one could rest and relax between one event and another during the Salone del Mobile. And so it was, reaching a peak of 32,000 visits in six days.

Kéré's work has placed at the center the broad concept of humanism: Kéré builds with people, puts man and his needs at the center of his architectural work. The fundamental elements are human relationships, hospitality, elementary rights, personal growth, emancipation and development of the residents, strengthening the community, encouraging closeness to nature and its rhythms.

And it is precisely what has been seen to reflect from the pavilion of Palazzo Litta: the circular stone structures have been positioned above a platform immersed in a carpet of reeds and protected by a canopy made of single bamboo canes. The structure of the pavilion is open and transparent, it is welcoming, it is a physical and real invitation to meet, to contact with others, to stop, to take time to dedicate it to the relationship with the other.

The pavilion is open, it does not give off rigidity, it is informal, just like the mind of the human being should be: open, flexible, ready for change. "I want visitors to feel at ease," says Kéré. And the installation is a clear reference to his origins of Gando in Burkina Faso: "My village is a reference point for the public architecture that I designed: you feel part of the community and the surrounding landscape", said the 'architect.

For the project we have been searching for the ideal expression of the material in the common perspective of reinterpreting the most primitive constructive method, that of assembling, stacking and working the stone: we wanted to rethink it in an innovative and audacious way. Six varieties of precious stones have been selected from the quarries of the requested company for the supply of the stones.

The chosen stones have warm and sandy tones to evoke the colors and the African textures, the most advanced technologies have been used to model every single element, individually designed.

The particular workmanship gives life to three circular pavilions entirely in stone, which have the extraordinary ability to detect the material in unusual characteristics: lightness, transparency and sinuosity. Even if the stone is worked here to transmit transparency and lightness in reality always stone is, and the weight of the material with which they are built the three pavilions represented a challenge difficult to solve, especially thinking of a temporary installation that had to be assembled and disassembled in a few days.

But the structural elements of Eterno Ivica, over 2000 SE3 to cover an area of ​​250 square meters, laid with the Woodeck Floor System and assembled with steel joists, have simplified and resolved the difficulty of the challenge with extraordinary effectiveness. Only with such a flexible solution and with the possibility of supporting weights above all expectations was it possible to create the beautiful roundish platform designed by the architect. Also with this project Eterno Ivica has demonstrated professionalism, product quality and maximum efficiency in operability.