Handle with Care: Tales of the Invisible

An ode to ideas and designs that never came to be

This architecture exhibition is inspired by the collections of different European museums that are members of the Future Architecture Platform:  Museum of Architecture and Design in Ljubljana (Slovenia), MAXXI National Museum of 21st Century Arts, Rome (Italy), and the Estonian Museum of Architecture based in Tallinn. Commissioned by the Triennale, this exhibition proposes, for the first time, a connection between emerging authors selected from the applications for the Future Architecture Platform call of 2020 and the members of this extensive network that brings together 22 countries.

Curated by Sonja Lakić and designed by Diego Sologuren (to whom I assisted during the design process), this exhibition is developed in three chapters and brings together a diversity of content ranging from studies, axonometrics, photographs, illustrations and sketches. A set of interviews and personal testimonials of some of the represented authors, their family members, researchers, and representatives of institutions, also allows us to contextualize these approaches and practices carried out across different European territories. Conceived as a single element that hosts an evolutive narrative, the scenography crosses the space intersecting with the existing architectural elements. Its configuration shows three differentiated parts which allow the content to be approached in three different ways according to its nature. A continuous element develops from a table, to a platform and a canopy offering a changing experience in the way the space and the works are perceived. In addition, a series of sculptural elements, which emerge as extensions of the main structure of the scenography, introduce complementary information to the main exhibition content and therefore add a counterpoint to the promenade.