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Radura | Milan

Radura Milan

Images

Location

Università degli Studi, Milano, Italy; Udine, Piacenza, Sirmione, Amatrice - Italy; Shangai, China

Year

2016

Client

Italy: Interni Magazine (Milano), Comitato "Un aiuto subito" (Amatrice); Cina: Susas (Shangai)

Type

Temporary installation

Credits

Design team:
Stefano Boeri (Founding partner), Azzurra Muzzonigro (Event coordination), Marco Giorgio (project leader), Giorgio Donà (project leader), Daniele Barillari, Francesca Da Pozzo;

Sound design:
Ferdinando Arnò for Quiet, please!; Lighting consultancy: MyLed;

Video: Blink Fish

 

Radura is a temporary installation, but much more besides. It is a travelling micro-construction that during 2016 arrived in a number of places from Milan to Sirmione passing through Udine, Piacenza and Bologna. Devised and created by Stefano Boeri Architetti for “Open Borders”, one of the Fuori Salone events promoted by INTERNI, Radura was inaugurated on 12thApril 2016 in the University of Milan’s Pharmacy Courtyard with a number of small-scale events, readings and meetings being held inside. The theme of the exhibition-event, created by Interni magazine and Arnoldo Mondadori Editore and open to the public from 11thto 23rd  April focused on overcoming the disciplinary boundaries between design and architecture and the search for highly experimental installations able to interact with the fields of music, cinema, photography, technology and environmental sustainability. The programme also envisaged the activation of a synergy with leading companies in the field of innovation and research, from established international brands to local niche producers, the latter being the case for Boeri who made use of a collaboration with the FVG Filiera del Legno company for the treatment of the material, from the cutting to the final processing.

First and foremost Radura is a refuge from the chaos of the often frenetic and noisy city life. It is a place in which one can sit, rest or wait: in a word regenerate, carrying out those normal everyday actions that are sometimes made difficult or even impossible by today’s urban rhythms that drive everything to movement, impatience and speed.

Radura is also a small open space located inside a larger open space where the 350 larch, pine and fir columns of different proportions act as a permeable filter between the inside and outside. However, not everything that is outside remains outside, because the gaze can penetrate through the compositional play of the cylindrical elements that reach up towards the sky like stylized trees. There is no complete caesuraor break with the outside world, merely a momentary attenuation. Radura is a public urban device designed to decongest flows and movements, holding them inside and thus creating a micro-environment of recollection in contrast to the space that surrounds it.

But Radura is not only a visual and tactile experience, it is also a sound device with its own vitality, carefully created by the composer Ferdinando Arnò in collaboration with the singer Melanie De Biasio, the guitarist Giorgio Cocilovo and the cellist Marco Decimo: the intrinsic polyphonic atmosphere in the structure changes with the movements of the visitor inside, becoming an open-air speaker cabinet shielding the visitor from external noises while inside everything is amplified.

At night Radura turns into a luminous circle that is recognizable in the city and which becomes a focal point of visual attention. It is therefore an object that lives and is continuously rediscovered, changing colours and brightness, enhancing the very material of the wood from which it is made.

Finally, Radura is a collective but intimate space which becomes an outdoor classroom for students at the Milan Polytechnic during the Summer School, bringing them conceptually and physically closer to the idea of ​​new urban spaces.
The mix of disciplines promulgated as a founding element of the
Interni Open Bordersexhibition is thus expressed by Boeri in the Radura with an elegant arrangement of physical movement, sound composition and illuminated spectacle that coexist in a delicate balance. With its frail and semi-permeable boundaries, Radura opens itself up to cross-pollinations and discussions, yet it remains the same, creating a place in space that embraces those who stay there.

Press release