Category: blog

Join the Broken Nature Public Symposium live-stream from circa 11:15 AM on YouTube to learn more about our project Italian Tropics / Fiore di Loto.

On the occasion of the opening of the XXII Triennale, Broken Nature: Design Takes on Human Survival, La Triennale di Milano will host the third Broken Nature symposium. This will be an opportunity to celebrate the protagonists of the exhibition—in the galleries, online, the book and beyond—and to delve deeper into the projects and ideas that have inspired our research in the past months. With a rich program of individual presentations, panel discussions and video contributions, this symposium will cover topics as diverse as human and non-human migration flows; the capacity of good information design to make the invisible visible; and the importance of untangling the threads that connect our singular and highly specific experiences to the complex macro-systems that make up the world’s tapestry.

Friday, March 1, 2019
10am–6:30pm

Teatro dell’Arte, La Triennale di Milano
Viale Emilio Alemagna, 6, 20121 Milano

Visual & Text – Broken Nature

Visual – Broken Nature

Broken Nature is an opportunity for us all to discuss matters of extreme importance for the world at large, as well as for the design and architecture community, which can and should play a vital role in making reparations with the world around us.

Broken Nature is composed of a thematic exhibition and a number of international participations solicited through official channels. It will run from March 1 to September 1, 2019.

Visual and Text – Broken Nature

Recreated botanical etching print to show the contemporary Lotus infestation in the Valli del Mincio wetland, Mantua, Italy.

Experience it in full here.

Visual – The Future Continuous

Textiles are the most obvious visible signifier of culture throughout Africa and Middle East. The history, beliefs, politics, fashions, status, and aspirations of people are communicated through the colors and patterns of textiles and the occasions on which they are worn or otherwise utilized. These textile traditions are part of a historical and contemporary global trading network driven by African taste and patronage. Batik is a technique of wax-resist dyeing applied to whole cloth originated from Indonesia, which was exported by a Dutch company from their colonies and later appropriated in West Africa. Today, through its narrative, we aim to break the flatness of western fashion models and learn tailoring techniques from African craftsmen.

More info here.

Visual & Text – Marginal Studio

The XXII Triennale di Milano, Broken Nature: Design Takes on Human Survival, highlights the concept of restorative design and studies the state of the threads that connect humans to their natural environments––some frayed, others altogether severed. In exploring architecture and design objects and concepts at all scales and in all materials, Broken Nature celebrates design’s ability to offer powerful insight into the key issues of our age, moving beyond pious deference and inconclusive anxiety. By turning its attention to human existence and persistence, the XXII Triennale will promote the importance of creative practices in surveying our species’ bonds with the complex systems in the world, and designing reparations when necessary, through objects, concepts, and new systems. Even to those who believe that the human species is inevitably going to become extinct at some point in the (near? far?) future, design presents the means to plan a more elegant ending. It can ensure that the next dominant species will remember us with a modicum of respect: as dignified and caring, if not intelligent, beings.

Visual and Text – Broken Nature

Counter Colonial Aesthetics takes the form of an open laboratory. Working in the exhibition space to experiment with a variety of materials and techniques, coming both from Sicilian tradition and from migrants’ background. Experimenting in strict collaboration with 8 asylum seekers and different guest, building a material based interaction to learn more about them and producing modern artifacts which express contemporary “traditions”.

Visual & Text – Marginal Studio

Counter-Colonial Aesthetic is an investigation of the Sicilian material culture that aims to create a participatory platform to reflect on the concepts of shared heritage and diasporic identities.

On show at Padiglione 33, via Gaetano La Loggia, 5 – 90129 Palermo, Italy from 22.09 – 4.11.2018.

Visual & Text – Marginal Studio