BASE Milan opens its doors to a temporary community of designers, architects and curators during the week of Furniture expopresenting We Will Design 2024. The former Ansaldo complex is transformed into a “Conviviality laboratoryto“, where the objective is to explore new forms of interdependent relationships between designers and citizens, starting from behaviors, gestures, feelings and spaces.
We Will Design 2024 invites you to reflect on international practices of coexistence, cohabitation and sharing, in relation to issues such as migration, gender, health and cultural differences. Participants try to imagine new ways of coexistence and interdependence based on principles such as cooperation, democracy, intercultural dialogue, equity and ecological sustainability.
While cities are characterized by futuristic and elitist constructions, autonomous solutions and informal settlements also emerge, where living becomes an act of resistance and affirmation of human dignity. BASE Milan proposes to start giving shape to thoughts and projects, as well as spaces and objects.
FLOWAIR created by Ingo Maurer
At the entrance to the courtyard of the cultural center, the attention is captured by the installation FLOWAIR by Ingo Maurer. A work that stands out for its fluid shapes and organic elements and seems to grow in harmony with the building’s fire escapes. FLOWAIR expertly explores inflated shapes, playing with shape, color and light to create a unique visual experience. During the day, the movement of the components, moved by wind machines and wind, is emphasized, while at night, a play of colored LEDs enhances its ability to inspire wonder. Composed of elements up to 10 meters high, which move slowly in the wind, FLOWAIR creates a choreography that deceives the perception of its real size. Using light as a material, Ingo Maurer emphasizes the importance of air movement, bringing the wind back into people’s lives. The decision to host such a work in the BASE spaces, frequented by people of different cultures and generations, demonstrates the intent to create an ideal place for an innovative exploration of the concept of air.
In the main room on the ground floor, a multifunctional space dedicated to events, conferences and exhibitions, was presented this year during the Outlounge areabut already active with the Miart – International Fair of Modern and Contemporary Art – the installation THALAMUScreated by the Italian architect duo based in London, Lemonot (Sabrina Morreale and Lorenzo Perri), in collaboration with Xavier Madden and Katja Banović.
TALAMO made by Lemonot
TALAMO presents itself as a convivial architecture: a huge bed, light and dynamically suspended between floor and ceiling. A soft and fluid landscape, shaped by gravity and the movements of bodies, which outline and deform its topography. At the same time, it is also a moving stage, thanks to a system of pulleys that allow its levitation, creating choreographies and imaginative configurations in which the boundary between matter and the human body is challenged.
According to the designers, the aim is to create a welcoming space for the public, which presents itself as a soft sofa delicately inserted into the exhibition space, but also a dynamic work, capable of interacting with the scheduled performances. Sometimes it becomes the scenography of the performances, other times it is transformed into a real stage costume, a soft prosthesis that fluidly envelops the artists’ bodies.
On the upper floors, you access the spaces of the Convivialit laboratoryto (Convivial Laboratory), where BASE renews its collaboration with Italian and international universities and academies. It is now evident that the world is going through significant changes, and therefore it is essential that not only professional practice, but also academic research, contributes to promoting new solutions and approaches to contemporary needs.
Several European institutions, including Central Saint Martins in London, ADS7 – Royal College of Art in London, the Slovak University of Technology, the Design for Sustainability Lab of the University of Florence, the Tecnológico de Monterrey, the Academy of Fine Arts and Design of the University of Ljubljana, the Technical University in Zvolen and the Politehnica University Timișoara, come together to propose ideas and solutions oriented towards social, ecological and political change focusing on the social and material sustainability of design, trying to anticipate future needs.
BASE also hosts the exhibition “The Body is a Movement” by Baltan & Onomatopee, where designers are called to explore the possibilities of reappropriating the human body. In a context in which the body is subject to external pressure oriented towards maximizing performance and profit, we try to develop strategies to regain our corporeity. The exhibition is divided into four projects, each addressing the theme of body care: modifying our movement, changing the way we listen and exploring how we can perceive the world differently through our bodies.
Weathering Ports by Yeon Sung
Weathering Ports by Yeon Sung, in collaboration with the V2_ Lab for the Unstable Media, investigates the pollution of Maasvlakte, an artificial industrial zone in the Port of Rotterdam. The project explores neighborhood climate as an embodied phenomenon and offers ways to experience it firsthand, through a bike equipped with sensors that collect data from the rider and the surrounding environment.
Twinning Underneath by Qiaochu Guo
Twinning Underneath by Qiaochu Guo presents a series of objects that aim to merge space and the body to stimulate the senses, proposing a speculative use of moxibustion in body repair. This practice leads to self-healing by stimulating internal circulation through the burning of mugwort over the surface of the physical, becoming a spiritual guide to inclusiveness and tolerance.
Sonic Driving by Laura Papke
In his project, Laura Papke states that our organisms are constantly at work, producing, composting, decaying and degrading. Sonic Driving it is a participatory performance that aims to promote collective healing processes through listening and feeling the heartbeat.
Touching Matter by Dora Lehy
Touching Matter by Dora Lehy invites the visitor to touch, hold, caress, press and feel the different consistencies and temperatures of the tactile instrumentation presented in the exhibition, leaving unique sensory memories in the palm of the hand.
The Convivial Laboratory also hosts two other innovative projects: the Camp And Temporary Homeboth focused on the theme of hospitality and the exchange of practices between artists and designers from all over the world, in line with the theme of conviviality of the 2024 edition.
The first project, The Convivial Laboratory – Temporary Home, comes to life in the rooms of casaBASE, the BASE guesthouse dedicated to the hospitality of artists and designers. Five projects displayed in as many rooms offer different interpretations of the theme of reception. Among the artists present, the collective Montjoi Institute proposes Angels‘s the light, a reflection on conviviality through sharing a meal with loved ones. The collective Computer Roompresented by the British Council, presents Found in translationinspired by personal stories in different languages. Erica Curci explores the theme of the skin as a place for meeting and exchanging information MOULTINGWhile Forty five degrees collects future-oriented spatial practices along the 45th parallel in Radical Rituals 45ºN 1ºW-45ºN 35ºE. In the end, Sophie Conroy questions the concept of home with Without to houseexploring alternative ways of life based on a stronger connection to community, nature and the self.
The camp of Parasite 2.0
The second project, The Convivial Laboratory – the Campis a collective experiment created in collaboration with the design agency Parasites 2.0. It is a real aggregate of tents on the terrace of BASE, open to a group of 20 participants including designers, students, curators and cultural operators. These participants will stay for 10 days as if they were in a campsite, or in a tent city, reflecting on the current situation in which many people are forced into precarious housing solutions. The Camp wants to imagine a coexistence based on solidarity, putting relationships and coexistence with others at the centre.
Parasite 2.0 therefore builds a hybrid space, inspired by the large square of metropolitan protest movements and the natural spaces of the counterculture and its communes. A place to sleep, meet and discuss, which seeks to address the global emergency of the housing crisis in a creative and innovative way.
MILAN BASE
Via Ambrogio Bergognone da Fossano 34
Timetables:
Courtyard 10AM — 1AM
Performance 10.30am — 8pm
bistroBASE 9:00 — 20:00
Terrace 3pm — 1am
base.milano.it
Galileo Morandi, architect born in 1986, lives and works in Los Angeles. He studied architecture at the Polytechnic University of Milan and at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (Sci-Arc). After several years of work spent under the scorching sun of the Middle East, he moved to Los Angeles in search of warmer climates and new adventures. He loves robots, artificial intelligence and Jazz, he hates white cubes in all their possible variations architectural. His work sits at the intersection of computational thinking, politics and ecology in design and architecture. He is not a regular visitor to social media, but you can find him as @galileomorandi.
Tags: BASE Milano presents conviviality laboratory MDW
