Alessandro Rocca

Iconoclastia, non c’è altro che montaggio

Il mondo delle immagini si presenta come un universo ordinato attraverso una molteplicita di sistemi basati su matrici di varia natura: tecniche, archivistiche, tematiche, disciplinari. La configurazione caotica con cui le immagini ci appaiono e soltanto un effetto collaterale; in realta, tutti noi sappiamo discernere, il piu delle volte automaticamente e senza sforzo, la natura, il contenuto e l’obiettivo di ogni immagine percepita. Questa obbedienza dell’universo visivo ai codici precostituiti smorza e nasconde il potenziale creativo ed eversivo delle immagini, le annichilisce e le rende, di fatto, inutilizzabili. Per questo, e necessario mettere in campo, come contromisura permanente, atti che puntino alla disorganizzazione della iconografia contemporanea per svelare, sotto la vernice dell’omogeneita, tutti i fattori utili all’esercizio della critica operativa e dell’azione creativa

I fiori del male

Si dice che ogni giardino sia una rappresentazione dell’Eden ma non e inutile pensare che, qualche volta, il giardino possa essere anche la ricostruzione di un angolo d’inferno. La coscienza e la ricerca di questa duplicita, spesso nascosta ma sempre possibile, porta a un arricchimento del pensiero progettuale e interpretativo: gli elementi di inquietudine, di trasgressione, e persino di violenza, sono altrettanti legami con la dimensione naturale, sono essenziali passaggi di comunicazione tra la funzione edificante, costruttiva e intimamente razionale del progetto e la funzione oscura, inconscia e distruttiva dell’irrazionalita. Il progetto deve ripararsi, deve difendersi e deve lottare per sconfiggere il caos della materia illogica e oscura che e pero un male necessario, il perturbante senza il quale nulla riesce ad assumere un senso, un significato, una forma

Le ceneri di Wittgenstein

La parodia come forma espressiva dominante della contemporaneita e un tema che si incontra in varie esperienze, da quelle piu concettuali, da Marcel Duchamp a Ludwig Wittgenstein, a quelle esplicitamente ironiche, come il Le Corbusier riscritto, a Saint-Cloud, da Rem Koolhaas, a quelle mimetiche, che trovano nella natura il proprio termine di riferimento. Dopo la fase modernista, che ha decretato la perdita di centralita della figura umana, l’era digitale apre nuovi scenari in cui elementi figurativi e non-standard tornano a essere praticabili. Il progetto di giardino, che il modernismo aveva ridotto a composizione astratta, cerca una nuova fusione col mondo naturale, inglobando esperienze artistiche e culture ecologiche. E quando il giardino si pone al centro del progetto di architettura si apre una nuova strada verso un traguardo che sembrava definitivamente perduto, il monumento, l’esperienza simbolica in cui l’architettura, secondo la profezia contenuta nel celebre pronunciamento di Adolf Loos, realizza la propria capacita di trasformare il mondo

Gariwo, il giardino a crescita illimitata

Gariwo (the Garden of the Righteous in the World) is the place to commemorate people who opposed the violence of wars and persecution based on ethnic and religious differences. Starting with the memory of the Shoah, Gariwo extends its recognition of the ‘righteous’ to the heroes of today. How do you design the Garden of the Righteous? Art, landscape and architecture are the areas in which to choose examples to organise the new Garden on Monte Stella, in Milan. The issues of design are neverending: the impossibility of finishing the list of the righteous; the figure, which image can interpret good in a contemporary sense; the word, how to recount the contents that it is wished to conserve in the garden; the movement, connected with an idea of knowledge as change, evolution, a path.

Enlargement of the Parish Church of Laives

The new addition is placed beside the old church on a north-south axis, orthogonal with respect to the direction of the original structure. The new hall is contiguous to an already existing lateral entrance to the old church, to which it is connected by an architectural pause, a glazed buffer that joins the two structures, old and new, while keeping them separate at the same time. The interior space is defined by the continuous wall on the western side, by the forward-sloping wall of the apse zone, and by the roof in the form of a tent that rises toward the altar.

Projects and Competition Entries

The city hall is an isolated volume on the edge of the street, while a second volume contains the library and the social and health services center, which are partially buried in the slope, and form the backbone of the new piazza of the town.

Vocational School in Bolzano

The building’s outer aspect was determined by urban planning considerations. A monumental two-story portico perpendicular to the main street leads into the lot to the entrance of the school. The complex is composed of three buildings of different heights and lengths. The atrium is located between the first and second, a vast covered courtyard flooded with light, a central space defined by the structure of the roof, with double symmetrical staircases that face the great void from two sides, and by the accessways to all the facilities: laboratories, offices, classrooms. The second and third buildings are connected by elevated steel walkways fully visible from the street, whose glass facades have been decorated by the Viennese artist Heimo Zobernig. A simple access system offers the 120 teachers and approximately 1000 students easy orientation inside the seven-storey building. The third floor of the central volume has a terrace used as an outdoor recreation area. Most of the facades are in exposed concrete, steel and glass. All the internal works are in fiber plaster, a material that generates a comfortable atmosphere and has a useful sound-absorbing effect. A first part of the complex began operation in January 2005, after the first construction phase, while the remaining structure, with the workshops and laboratories, was completed in the fall of 2007.

Tiroler Goldschmied in Scena

The building is composed of a one-story base aligned with Via Scena and inserted in the slope of the terrain, topped by a multi-story volume that conforms to the volumetric space occupied by the demolished structure that stood here previously.

Out of Love and Necessity. The European Heimat of Thomas Höller and Georg Klotzner

The architecture of Thomas Holler and Georg Klotzner has developed, until now, in the context of Alto Adige, sheltered from the stress and contaminations of metropolitan settings. Along the valleys of the Adige and the isarco, in relation to a society accustomed to governing its future with great local independence and a highly developed aptitude for social control, the questions of architecture seem less abstract. Communities are an active presence and the work of the architect addresses concrete, well-defined themes. This activism is sustained by the region’s renowned prowess in the maintenance of urban spaces, cultivated countryside and landscape, seen as indispensable values of the ethnic and cultural identity of South Tyrol.

Science High School in Vipiteno

Northwest of the old city, before the Church of Santa Margherita one encounters the scholastic center of Vipiteno. To the south its end is formed by the long wing for the classrooms of the new Science High School.