prologue
Maybe we should just accept. Not only that, but accept after we observe. Observe it one more time. Observe it more closely. Observe it from afar. And then understand. What accepting is. What accepting feels. Accepting is free. Accepting is happiness. Accepting is the end. Simple. This is the world today. Yet there is so much ‘in’ this world today. Do we understand enough how much the world ‘is’ today? Do we still see enough what ‘this’ world is today? Do we still even feel that there is ‘a’ world today?
A world is available. A world presents itself. It is Present // A presence to be celebrated. Even when we did not imagine that we ought to celebrate it anymore.
six + one
We have been invited in this marvellous space. This marvellous gallery space. Invited to present more ‘next to come’. An invitation that comes with being invited in this space on one of the most exciting moments of the year in Milan. Where everyone is always ‘full of expectations’ for what might be the next: The next invention. The next concept. The next basics. The next ‘next’.
This space. This time. This next. Is the next really the next? Or is the next maybe only good enough as the previous. And can the previous be the next. All this can be the next.
Six columns – and one solitary and different around the corner – give this space order and rhythm. These columns support the heaviness of what architecture in se is. At the same time with their position and appearance they turn this heaviness into the lightness this space can have.
At the same time the columns are much more. The columns are there to stay but also to embrace change. The columns are there to guide not only the space but they are also a background to all kind of auxiliary stuff. Technical tubes and ducks and heating components or fire extinguishers and safety signs are repeated and lead from one column onto the next. Slightly different every time. Slightly the same every time. Different colours. Different surfaces. Each time the same but adapted differently.
Do we still see this still today? These columns are always present but do we still remark still their presences. ? These columns are collecting all kind of things – being structural but also supporting stuff – and in the daily presence just present. Without notice. Without appreciation. Only from when one is pointing at them and starts to reflect and then comments on them, others start to follow that alternative way of observing.
Arriving for the first time at Assab One in a minute the beauty came to the eye. One minute later it was clear what the idea for this participation would be. Just creating a background to better frame the presence of these columns. Six small white rooms around the columns. For people To be invited it in. And to be together with. And to discover the known as the unknown. And by that also learning to understand that what we have – but we might not be aware of anymore – is worth having and by that maybe good enough. Good enough to not need anything else. Anymore.
This might be another take on the most urgent question the world and in extended sense case architecture is confronted with and challenged to today: how to move on. Maybe how to move on might be also about how to live with. With what there is yet. These columns and the way they are brought back on show do stands as an image for that question. It is what is asked to architecture today but no less this image might be the question on human condition today. This without any pretence added to the idea of the presentation. One should dare.
The seventh column in the space – we talked about six plus one – is a particular one. It is not in the grid of the others being just around the corner. And it is was – the moment of the first visit – just simply white. After a close observation and not without imagination, this white column becomes a drawing collecting all ideas that can be found on the other columns. How we are changing an attitude in accepting can become inspiring, to not only see the unseen different but also adapt other unimportant actualities into something just slightly differently. Not by an extensive intervention. But by a simple gesture. Maybe like a drawing. Like a drawing is often no more no less, just an idea. And idea on how to move on with things.
colour
The six columns and in extension the whole space of Assab One share colour. At first these colours seem to be just there. And they are just there. The origin might be just choice – personal and sign of the time, sometimes just a colour as a sign -. And by that without meaning in between each other. But with a certain eye helping to abstract the colours from their surfaces and possible meaning, colours one next to the other reveal a beauty that makes them like a foreseen and conceived palette of taste. On the only long wall of the space with rhythm by half columns embedded in it, the seven distinguished colours are celebrated as they are. In between and partly on these half columns just as coloured surfaces. Coloured surfaces as such.
cracks
Later on, the building where Assab One is situated was visited. Rooms and spaces. Corridors and staircases. A wonderful world. On more than one wall traces of the history of the whole complex could be found. One type of trace stayed in the eye. Tiny almost invisible cracks in the plasterwork might point to some ‘movements’ going on or that were once going on. At least it reveals the age of everything at all. But also. As it comes with age. Beauty. Ever beauty.
Here and there in this marvellous realm this gallery space is imbedded in some extra cracks will be added next to the real crack. Tiny pencil lines will find position in between the others. After a while we will not know anymore which was the real and which the beauty only.
epilogue
The columns and the column. The colours just the colours. The crack also beauty. Three interventions. Maybe even not interventions. But only introductions. Simple introductions with the only ambition to change the way we are used to approach the things we are surrounded by. A matter of shift. At first, a mental shift. But second maybe not needing a physical shift. Conceptual thinking leads always from idea to materiality. Contextual thinking fro m reality to change. Maybe accepting what is available to adoration. Adoration of what we forgot to adore. And by adoring what was not adored anymore just or only becoming simply happy with what we have. Yet.
Available. Accept. Adore.
onlY. simplY. happY.
AAA
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