All photos by Toni Brugnoli
Buildings are the vertical dimension of
the city map. They rise from the soil and consist of capsuled roots in the shape
of basements and catacombs that can give them stability or protect them from
water. The buildings are usually aligned towards the street, creating a valley
that channels the passengers in mainly two directions. The valley consists of
the street, the sidewalk and is limited by the buildings.
Parallel to the valley, water,
electricity, gas and telecommunication are channelled through tubes and cables,
connecting different parts and and creating differently shaped networks. All of
these networks also expand vertically in space connecting living units in
buildings, that are arranged on top of each other. Rain Pipes collect the rain
that falls on the buildings roof and channel it towards the canalisation. There
is a spring born on the roof gathering water, concentrating it with all those
leaves and dust bundled into one and turning it into a river running below the
city by the name of canalisation.
The facades of the buildings are their
public display, their face. The buildings communicate through their facade with
the public. The face of the building talks about its owners taste, about how
good the building is taken care of, if it gets cleaned or not, if there is
vacant flats or not.
Every Building has a main entrance, the
gate that connects the public and the interior of the house. Everything that
enters the house has to pass the gate.
The facade is hiding many underlying
processes that are taking place inside of the building
The windows are the witness to the
streets. During night they communicate if the light of a flat is turned on or
not and by that indicating possible activity. They might as well tell if
somebody is still awake. Windows could let you get a look inside of the flat,
the atmosphere of that living space. If there is movement on inhabitants or a
television turned on that leads to horrendous shadows on the walls once
somebody walks in front of it. A person could be smoking at the window and be a
secret observer of the streets. The facades are the display of possible
witnesses of what is happening on the street.
The exhibition facades is uniting artist
from Argentina German and Italy that are working on ways how to activate the
surfaces of the city. They developed methods that are dealing with
possibilities and meanings of the vertical urban space, how to interact with
it, how to depict it or how to transform it.