The cycle of events inaugurated at the FAB - Fiandre Architectural Bureau - in Milan, with the presentation of the monograph "Pier Carlo Bontempi: Architettura e Tradizione" published by Franco Maria Ricci, continues at Castellarano, at the FAB of the Fiandre headquarters, with the exhibition "Pier Carlo Bontempi: The world's greatest provocation. The Labyrinth by Franco Maria Ricci and other architecture".
Open to the public until 10 December, the exhibition was inaugurated on Friday 20 November, with a preview that included a "role play" in which, with the participation of the audience and the moderation of Maria Grazia Villa - the journalist behind the Architecture and Design column for the Gazzetta di Parma - the architect Pier Carlo Bontempi played the roles of the people who fill his "consciousness at the time of designing a development" and the role and importance they each have.
The exhibition set up at the FAB in Castellarano showcases the Parma-born architect's most significant projects, highlighting the fact that his design approach goes against the flow of current thinking on contemporary architecture, but has met with considerable success worldwide.
The exhibition goes in search of a classical or vernacular design philosophy, across four environments - characterised by different geometric shapes - into which the four different thematic sections are grouped: Villages, the Piazza, Blocks and the Labyrinth.
The editors of Floornature, which curated the cycle of events produced in partnership with Fiandre, explains the thinking behind the project: "The name Pier Carlo Bontempi is on everyone's lips today, because of the Labyrinth project on Strada Masone near Fontanellato, and because he is a controversial architect, who is loved outside Italy but viewed with suspicion in his homeland. From the use of the watercolour technique of Giambattista Lusieri, to the influence of Etienne-Louis Boullée, whose visionary spirit is to be seen in the pyramid of the labyrinth complex by Franco Maria Ricci; from the stripped-down classicism Claude-Nicolas Ledoux's Paris customs houses, to certain views by Canaletto, his poetics are full of historical allusions, which project the observer into an indeterminate time."
Today Pier Carlo Bontempi inveighs, with a kindly tone but intellectual ferocity, against a certain "Modernity, that puts up buildings of unjustified virtuosity" and adopts a self-referential language, without care for the wellbeing of people or the harmony of buildings with their surroundings.
What can we expect of him in the future and what is his role in defining contemporary architecture?"
A selection of pictures of the inaugural preview held on Friday 20 November. Click here to see the gallery on the website of FAB - Fiandre Architectural Bureau
