“Give me a lever and I will move the world.”
In the place where Archimedes was born and lived, two laboratories engage in a dialogue, exploring the concepts of heaviness and lightness while combining primordial materials such as clay and iron with new technologies.
The Brick Space
The brick is a simple and primitive semi-finished product, yet a highly technical one.
Its history is inextricably linked to technological progress and the development of human civilisation. Over the centuries, it has undergone various transformations and taken on different forms, while preserving its essential formal nature, which has made it a true archetype from both a typological and morphological perspective.
Originating in Mesopotamia, a land characterised by a scarcity of building materials such as wood and stone, the brick evolved through a slow and progressive process of technological development and refinement, adapting its weight and dimensions to the human hand, which was responsible for placing it into solid masonry structures.
It is simultaneously a primitive material, handmade from earth and straw, and an industrial semi-finished product with a modular nature and an unconstrained morphology, opening up an almost limitless range of technical and aesthetic possibilities. It is the simplest and most discreet building element, a fundamental reference within a vocabulary that has never constrained expression or thematic variation.
Thanks to this versatile nature, which contrasts with its pronounced formal clarity, the brick becomes, within the laboratory, a model and a dimensional space characterised by a defined proportional relationship. Within this framework, a series of technical and functional explorations can take place.
A brick can be solid or hollow; it can feature ribs and openings that transform it into an air vent or a small window. It can become an insect hotel, a nest providing shelter for birds and other living species; it can be conceived as a single element serving a specific function or, consistently with its inherent nature, incorporated into a modular system.
Each student will be invited to work with the standard brick (9.2 cm deep, 5.7 cm high, and 19.4 cm long) as a unit of measurement and a dimensional framework within which to experiment. The aim is to explore a process of re-functionalisation and transformation, generating objects that retain the same underlying geometry while developing different functional or technical characteristics.
At the end of the workshop, each student will have the opportunity to 3D-print their brick at full scale using a clay 3D printer.
The Wired Space
The second part of the course will focus on exhibiting the objects created during the previous week. The exhibition will be hosted at the former Carmelite Convent in Siracusa (or at the MADE Gallery). The design and development of the exhibition will be conceived as a collective and collaborative project, based on a single material: a metal rod. The aim is to create a zero-volume exhibition system in which the objects can be displayed through a wireframe structure.
The exhibition design module will be divided into two parts. The first, introductory and theoretical phase, will focus on the analysis and presentation of a series of relevant installation projects, providing the conceptual and practical foundations for the second phase of the course. The latter will be workshop-based and will also include a basic welding course.
