Savage Events

Superstudio's ideal cities were 12 in the English version, 13 in the Italian version, but rumors of an unpublished 14th city have been circulating for a while. The Last City does exist and will not be a secret for much longer.

Black Square is extremely proud to have the chance to publish, for the first time, this mythical 1978 text within Savage Architecture. Savage Architecture - exhibition and book - is about to be launched with three events this week in London. Authors Gian Piero Frassinelli (former Superstudio), Matteo Costanzo & Gianfranco Bombaci (2A+P/A) and editor Davide Sacconi will be here to explain and discuss the work.

Celebrations will start the Architectural Association on Thursday, 6 pm, with the opening of the exhibition and book launch. 

The  actual discussion will take place at the Italian Cultural Institute, 39 Belgrave Square, on Friday at 6 pm, with a roundtable debate between Sam Jacob (Sam Jacob Studio), Markus Lahteenmaki (Drawing Matter), Jacopo Benci (British School Rome) and authors 2A+P/A and Gian Piero Frassinelli - chairman Davide Sacconi. 

Finally, on Friday, from 10 pm on, we look forward to seeing you at Nomad, 58 Old Street, for a Savage Party with music by Signorina Van de Rohe. During the party, Signorina and AYR (the collective formerly known as Airbnb Pavilion - Alessandro Bava, Fabrizio Ballabio, Octave Pero & Luis Ortega Govela) will play a preview of a Savage Video - we won't spoil the surprise saying who stars in it... but we can promise it's going to be fun.

Signorina van der Rohe: pink is the new black.

Black Cube

If #gift n.1 came from Italy, #gift n. 2 is straight out of Spain thanks to our friend Alvaro Velasco-Perez. It is a lovely, lovely book, the catalogue of an exhibition at the University of Navarra in Pamplona (unfortunately this one just closed at the end of July). Madrid-born Manglano-Ovalle is an artist based in Chicago; for The Black Forest he created a suite of works linked by the use of charcoal as key material.

The exhibition was dominated by two 5x5x5m cubes lined with charred beech wood which looks, in turn black, grey, or silvery depending on the light. Manglano-Ovalle says that the cubes are meant to be at the same time sculptures and pieces of architecture. He paired these sculptures (or, as Donald Judd would say, 'specific objects') with a series of photographs that look just like, well, black squares.

Inigo Manglano-Ovalle, 6-7-2014, New York

Inigo Manglano-Ovalle, Pamplona, Navarra, 16 de Nov. 2014.

The images are in fact carbon impressions taken in different places and at different times - 'indexical impressions of the sky' as Manglano explains. They are all black and yet they are not exactly the same. It is impossible to convey these differences by posting scanned pages f the catalogue, and probably nothing can compare the real experience of seeing these images in person. Carbon becomes not only the theme of this imaginary forest - burned, the artist seems to suggest, by the arrogance of mankind - but its very body, its texture. The idea of a black photo is haunting, like an ultimate, super-dense black square that is supposed to contain a secret image, or perhaps all the possible images one can imagine, collapsed in one frame.

The exhibition at the Faculty of Architecture, University of Navarra, Pamplona.

We cannot thank Alvaro enough for this fantastic surprise. It really is a unique addition to our personal collection of black squares.

Naples as a paradigm

The first gift we received this season comes from Naples thanks to Cherubino Gambardella via Michela Bonomo. Volando sulla Megalopoli (Flying over the Megalopolis) gathers the projects produced for an exhibition that is still on show at the Cloister of Santa Maria La Nova in Naples: the exhibition closes Jan 7, 2016, so there are still a few weeks to visit it. If you happen to be in Naples, it is definitely a must! The work curated by Gambardella stands out as one of the most interesting recent attempts to discuss the urban condition in Italy. In Volando sulla Megalopoli Gambardella invites eleven architects to take a position vis-a-vis contemporary Naples using text and drawing, in a non-literal, imaginative way; the work is completed by eleven large models that illustrate in three dimensions an exemplary fragment of the vision of the author. While the work is very site-specific, we think it is not out of place to read in it a larger ambition to say something about the urban condition in Europe at large: Naples as a paradigm.

Close-up of the model illustrating Beniamino Servino's entry.

Naples is unique and yet exemplary: a law onto itself, the most and least Italian city, the most beautiful and the most ravaged by random development. The idea of constructing a sort of polyphonic project for Naples recalls Roma Interrotta and yet feels refreshingly bold and contemporary because of both the multimedia content and the subject itself - a city that is just impossible to define once and for all. Naples has it all, the very best architecture and a stunning landscape: it also has one of the deadliest volcanos in the world, and a too-complex-for-words social situation. Gambardella's drawing (above) is a perfect portrait of the complexities and contradictions of Naples. A couple of centuries ago, most big cities in Italy were all about gold and dirt - Venice, Rome, Palermo - but now perhaps Naples has remained the only place that can claim that. The book makes the potential of this condition all the clearest for avoiding data, statistics, and worn technical attempts at a 'scientific' analysis: its intelligence is all in the attempt to mobilize the visionary capital of the place.

Image by Lorenzo Capobianco.

The eleven positions are by no means homogeneous: from Beniamino Servino's sophisticated critique of the relationship between past and present, to Lorenzo Capobianco's plea for a rediscovery of collective open air space, from Maria Gelvi's hypothesis for a rethinking of residential sprawl, to Concetta Tavoletta's proposal for the decaying industrial heritage. These differences are what makes the book particularly compelling. We haven't visited the exhibition yet, but it looks like a very successful installation that makes the most of a stunning historical location and completes it with a gold-painted structure that is a nod to the city's rococo legacy. This is very much a choral piece of work; and yet, Gambardella's passion and commitment are very evident and function as the necessary link between the individual positions. Gambardella's own drawings stand out for their irony and confidence, pairing a Serlio fragment with a brightly coloured hand sketch. They make us smile and hope the best for Italy: to grow out of what Kant would call its 'self-incurred immaturity' without losing its sprezzatura. Thank you Cherubino for this gift!

Draawing by Cherubino Gaambardella.