Representative drawing of the Architettura Gassosa

The debate that will take place on Tuesday, 12 March at the Mexican Embassy in Rome is expected to be a very interesting meeting. First of all for the theme, the manifesto of “Architettura Gassosa” (Gaseous Architecture) by Emmanuele Lo Giudice, and secondly for the participants.

The presence of the author himself and that of Stefano Oliva, professor and scholar of philosophy, will give life to an encounter in which some philosophical, political and social aspects belonging to this theory will be revealed, even if not yet debated.

The contributions in video conference from Mexico will show how the work of Lo Giudice is not only linked to the Italian and European reality but is also applicable to every social and historical context, ranging from Italy to Mexico.

I realize, however, that many readers do not know the Architettura Gassosa by Lo Giudice yet, what is meant by Architettura Gassosa then?

The theory has been presented for the first time in April 2018 in Mexico during an international congress, and some months later also in Italy in November during the 16th Biennale Architettura in Venice inside the Spanish hall of Axtu Aman, through a seminar and a workshop.

“Architettura Gassosa” is a graphic manifesto told in the pages “Architettura Gassosa, per un nuovo realismo critico” (“Gaseous Architecture, for a new critical realism” – https://bit.ly/2HiA7Jd) by Emmanuele Lo Giudice, which is meant to give an architectural response to the transformations that contemporary society has been experiencing in recent decades.

What lo Giudice makes is, starting from an analysis of the relations’ system in the contemporary society, looking for an architectural proposal that approaches and responds to this “new” gaseous society. In fact, as Lo Giudice says: “if in the past people came into contact with each other only because they found themselves physically close, in the same “solid” square or in workplaces, today with the new forms of social interaction of the Internet age , the bonds between people are “gaseous”, linked by common interests, by the “properties” that the various individuals have in common. Just think about the various social networks, Facebook, the various apps that connect people around the world even without ever meeting physically. What binds people is a space between, which unites independent individual realities, a property space composed of attractive and repulsive forces that create a well-defined perceptive and performative apparatus. […]  The program of the gaseous architecture does not follow a predefined project, but envisages the idea of ​​an immanent architecture, no longer linked to a purely formal research, but to the properties that characterize it. So we no longer have a great institutional architecture for which the building is born, but an open relationship system, composed of architectural particles that, like the atoms of a gas, move in space linked to each other by the specific properties given by both function they perform (museum, house, library, shop, etc.), both by some specifics that unite them (color, material, etc.) “

(Emmanuele Lo Giudice pag. V, VII)

Depliant of "Architettura Gassosa"

In the text by Lo Giudice we can glimpse the lesson of Yona Friedman, whom Lo Giudice has met and saw personally, curating several exhibitions and the creation of his unique design objects now deposited in the private collection of Collette Tornier. As well as the texts of Manuel Castells, Saskia Sassen, Cacciari, Foucalt, and the lessons of Juan Miguel Hernandez de Leon and Jose Juan Barba who Lo Giudice has known and followed during his years in Madrid. The analysis of Lo Giudice obviously presents some critical points, and using the host’s words, Stefano Oliva, which we will meet on March 12th, we can say:

“But what are the risks of a project that takes on epochal change without assessing its potential criticalities? A possible starting point in this direction: the gases, otherwise completely volatile, “need an enclosure that contains them” (page 54), which leads us to think of that process of ‘reterritorialization’ that according to Deleuze follows the movements of deterritorialization. In this perspective we can think of how the erosion of private property is ‘paid’ in terms of continuous traceability (so that leisure time and personal inclination is put to work). The gaseous architecture will escape such dangers by emphasizing the critical aspect, in the face of the realism that it professes as well. “

Event "L'architettura gassosa"

For those who could not participate in the debate on March 12th, further meetings are scheduled in the coming months, both at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome,  on April 12th, and again at the Macro Museum in Rome, with an international seminar on 28th-29th May, and with a workshop from 4th to 9th June.