BIENNIAL PROJECT
(Study for) Chapel for Scenes of Public Life —The Meeting of Enrico Mattei and the Queen of Sheba
baukuh, in collaboration with photographer Stefano Graziani, exhibit a scaled down reinterpretation of Giotto’s Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, Italy: famed for its murals which line the space, narrating the life of Christ. Taking what is effectively a problem of format, the ways the images are arranged to convey meaning. baukuh and Graziani’s chapel displays places, figures, and events depicting the fictitious encounter of Enrico Mattei, an Italian politician and entrepreneur who ran the state-owned oil company ENI, with the Queen of Sheba, a biblical character. baukuh’s chapel replaces the expected narrative sequence with a document that is involved in mural production: oversized Renaissance cartoon drawings. This drawing technique, is used to enlarge and transfer information onto the wall as a base and guide for painting. In baukuh’s chapel these intermediaries becomes the picture itself. baukuh’s title emphasizes the provisional nature of the project—one almost reads the chaos of the cartoon drawings as the set of a film with the characters not yet in place. The project celebrates the discordance, rather than a smooth encounter of image-based worlds.
BIO
baukuh produces architecture.Designs are independent of personal taste. No member of baukuh is ever individually responsible for any single project, each of which s the product of the office as a whole. Working without a hierarchical structure or a stylistic dogma, baukuh produces architecture out of a rational and explicit design process. This process is based on a critical understanding of the architecture of the past. The knowledge encoded in the architecture of the past is public, and starting from this public knowledge, any architectural problem can be solved.
baukuh was founded in 2004 and is now composed by Paolo Carpi, Silvia Lupi, Vittorio Pizzigoni Giacomo Summa, Pier Paolo Tamburelli and Andrea Zanderigo. baukuh is based in Milan and Genoa. baukuh recently completed the House of Memory in Milan (2015) and is currently involved in the realization of several public commissions throughout Europe. Baukuh won international architecture and urban design competitions (Amsterdam 2003, Budapest 2003, Pavia 2006, Genoa 2009, Torino 2010, Hoogstraten 2013, Tirana 2015, Aalst 2016), and curated exhibitions (Padua 2006, Monte Carlo 2015, Milan 2015). baukuh took part in the Rotterdam Biennale (2007 and 2011), in the Istanbul Biennial (2012), in the Venice Biennale (2008 and 2012), and in the Chicago Biennial (2015).
