"2A+P rivista di progettazione" - "LANDSCAPE"
Type Editorial project - design magazine
Editors-in-chief 2A+P (Gianfranco Bombaci, Domenico Cannistraci, Pietro Chiodi, Matteo Costanzo, Valerio Franzone)
Publisher Cooper & Castelvecchi, Rome (Italy)
Issue 2A+P rivista di progettazione, n. 2 LANDSCAPE
Pages 130
Language Italian / English
Year December 2001
Link ”2A+P rivista di progettazione Invito alla lettura”, review by Furio Barzon
2A+P rivista di progettazione was an annual design magazine that merged art, architecture and thinking to analyze some subjects of the contemporary culture, and was conceived and edited by the Rome based design group 2A+P.
2A+P rivista di progettazione was meant as cycles of related monographic issues that focus on the interferences between the various branches of knowledge and it approaches the design practice from a theoretical point of view. Thus all the writings and the images published in the magazine are not just related to the edifices meant as the result of “designing and building”, but they are related to considerations coming from various directions thus to examine in depth the inseparable subjects of contemporary designing.
The first cycle is about the relationships between the human being, body, space, city and nature, and it is composed by three issues: Body, Home and Landscape. The sequence of these three topics is not ruled by a dimensional reason (from the smaller one to the bigger one), but by a logical, retroactive and dynamic process according to which the body is the key player of the space around itself, the house is its first site of action, and the natural and the urban landscape are capable to absorb it. As a consequence the cycle B-H-L is the manifestation of the relations of the different entities that contributes to each topic. The body, the home, and the landscape are just three possible arrangements, each one with its personal structure, capable to generate a system of relations. They constitute a cycle and not a series thus to underline the conceptual “loop” that fastens the three of them: the digital space introduced in relation to the body is presented again in relation to the house and later to the landscape; a pressed shirt is meant as a metaphor of the house; city and nature become features for the design of the dwelling; the body becomes a landscape instead of being a simple scenario. Body, Home and Landscape aren’t a sequence and none of them is a starting point, an arrival or an end.
The contribution of various fields of knowledge permitted to develop the debate with thoughts coming from different directions. The strategy was to create conceptual structures that admitted an inclusivist approach and the creation of a site of hybridization between different experiences.
Landscape, the third issue, considers the topic of the landscape as one of the most important and delicate of the contemporary culture and gives it a an all-embracing value to go beyond its limits as an area of knowledge related to the garden, the park, or to a natural site in general and that identifies the landscape designer as the only one capable to work on it. Once free from its exclusive natural value the landscape can refer to a wood, a city, a text, or a house. Thus the discourse is not limited to an analysis of the concept of landscape but to a possible construction of the contemporary landscape through the use of a structure of action and interaction with the subject, an operative system composed by 3+2 Tools (Cell, Density, and Surface) and Actions (Immersion and Mutation) that make the landscape a multiple subject composed by infinite elements. Landscape is a “place of places” and at the same time it’s a mental gearwheel. It’s genetic material, but even digital impulse. It’s our skin. It’s fascination, disgust, it’s our knowledge. Landscape is the new territory.
This issue presents essays, interviews, slogans and images by architects, artists, designers, philosophers and art critics such as: Actar Arquitectura, Asymptote Architecture, Bianco e Valente, Karl S. Chu, Giacomo Costa, IaN+, le K Architectures, Bart Lootsma, .NL Architects, Perino e Vele, Sergio Risaliti, Renato Rizzi, r & sie.d/b:l, Mario Sasso, and Stalker.
It also includes a gallery with works by: Sara Ciracì, Formalhault, Luca Vitone, and Cristina Zamagni.