Gian Ferrari room
Curated by Margherita Guccione and Pippo Ciorra

He grew up in contact with the Florentine radicals and with Sottsass, he created an icon such as the Tolomeo lamp, he designed Olivetti's computers and re-humanized buildings all over the world, he is Michele De Lucchi, the architect and designer protagonist of the sixth edition of the NATURE series of monographic exhibitions curated by Margherita Guccione Director of MAXXI Architecture and Pippo Ciorra Senior Curatot MAXXI Architecture, the MAXXI exhibition formula in which the guest architect is asked to design a site / specific installation that represents a synthesis of his own architectural research .

De Lucchi, who since the beginning of his activity has crossed the various scales of architecture with great wisdom and rigor, from design to the city, has chosen to represent himself with the installation The Missing Ring, a sculptural element between the object and the building, an environmental installation full of meanings and references to his imagination and construction practice, in the spaces of the Gian Ferrari Gallery from 7 December 2018 to 3 March 2019.

"In its mission to give a voice to contemporary architects, MAXXI, always open to the evolution of global architectural practice, also wants to testify to the specificity of its own architectural culture, interpreted by architects like De Lucchi, who know how to wisely combine" local "tradition and innovation - says Margherita Guccione Director of MAXXI Architecture and curator of the exhibition - Architects who have nourished utopias in the training period but have been able to convince industries of the need for the project, capturing the contemporary thanks to listening to nature, reliance on technology, ancient wisdom of craftsmanship ".

The Missing Ring, whose project will become part of the MAXXI Architettura Collections, is a circular space that can be walked through, covered with HI-MACS® acrylic stone elements whose shape is inspired by the wooden roofs of the housing construction; the wall of the structure permeated by a play of light and shadow enriches the visitor's experience, creating a surprising, changeable and evocative space.

With this installation, De Lucchi suggests looking at, crossing and walking through the building, which in its very form evokes the need to find in the texture of our civil and productive relationships, in our moral vision of society, the new chains of which we are orphans. , more or less conscious. The NATURE exhibition project consists of a challenge to enter into a relationship with Zaha Hadid's space, through her own idea of architecture. A hand-to-hand in which to represent oneself, one's own design history, the most current research, without responding to a real client: a project that is basically small for architects used to dealing with large dimensions, but extremely dense with concentrated contents and meanings in a few square meters. Thus, after Francesco Venezia, Alberto Campo Baeza, West8, UN Studio and Álvaro Siza, with De Lucchi the MAXXI makes another stretch of road investigating the connection that binds (or should bind) nature with the urban intertwining. "The installation proposed for the exhibition is a design that would work at all scales, from the bracelet to the walled city, - says Pippo Ciorra, curator of the exhibition - it is a space but also a conceptual topology, open / closed, it is a wall that encloses a place that is itself a habitable, inspectable place. It is a piece of nature, but at the same time an application of technologically sophisticated materials. In short, it is a device to prevent us from cataloging and to make the boundaries between scales and disciplines harmless ".