Nazario Sauro, Baranzate (Milano), Lombardy, Italy, 2020.
Reverberation is an action that allows some elements to propagate in space, reflect, refract, persist in time and finally get to be perceived even when the direct source has now exhausted. The metaphor applied to the project allows establishing connections between elements of the past and the present, between distant places and between different people. The reverberation is never clearly perceived, for this reason, it differs from an echo, it appears differently from the source, less defined, more ethereal and intangible. It is therefore proposed differently, a phantom way, where it is precisely the dematerialization of some elements to make others prevail, the most significant ones.
Digital newsstand - The Kiosk
The kiosk, considered by us as a monumental element in the centre of the square that reverberates the modern society to which it has witnessed, is transformed into a "Digital Newsstand"; an information temple within which digital audio and video stimuli are transmitted. The building is covered with a micro-perforated membrane that makes it a perfect prism, highlighting its shape, and letting it glimpse at the same time creating a phantom environment. The semi-transparent membrane creates a reverberation between inside and outside by delimiting a perimeter corridor to the original structure that constitutes an obligatory path and which houses the devices for the dissemination of sound information.
The main entrance is kept while all other openings are closed, creating loops from where you can peek at the central activity.
Inside the building is freed from the original septa, creating an octagonal space at the centre of which there is a bundle of projection sheets oriented according to the diagonals. Projected video information is determined by an input-output process whose variable is the very position of people in space. For this reason, there are seats obtained from the original inserts of the kiosk that are intended to stimulate new positions.
As the number of people present increases the amount of information transmitted and the level of contamination between them, accentuated by the reflected ceiling light reflections. Outside the building reverberates in the surrounding square, creating seats that are arranged following the octagonal offset and go to degrade away.
Sacred workshop - The Church
The church, through some marks left, reverberates a world and a past civilization based on traditions, the cult of matter and craftsmanship. Trying to take back and bring into the present some of these elements becomes a "Sacred Workshop", a hermaphrodite place where the sacredness of rituals and profanity of ceramics coexist. In the church an immaterial space is created, where the materiality of the terracotta is highlighted by contrast.
Inside, taking advantage of the reverberation of the now disappeared church, they are introduced into the design of the sacred elements, such as the altar and the arches, in an evanescent form.
The rituals of the Mass that define the types of workstations are also resumed and the reverberation between people is created by inserting semitransparent materials. The interior initially appears as an immaculate place, dominated by immateriality, with time the ceramic processing soils the worktops and the environment constituting the reverberation of the material on the place itself. The ethereal arches of the interior reverberate beyond the walls even outside and an additional septum is introduced, with the walls in a religious pattern, which makes the activity perceptible from the outside.
Hybrid habitats - Library square
The connection between the kiosk and the church is formed by Habitat Ibridi, interventions that are generated starting from elements located on the territory and that is more or less contaminated by the design strategies of both main buildings depending on the distance from them. At night, the spaces change shape and appear differently thanks to the play of light, a reverberation of the activity of the day in the dark.
Reverb Connection path
The Kiosk and the church are also connected by a direct route, made recognizable thanks to graphics on the ground and posters that sponsor the two places. Both elements already present along the streets and new become the protagonists of the route
