Architecture and design operate as indicators: What our world is versus what it can become. The Satellite Stations and Inventory of Life research people’s responses to verified and imagined realities
Introducing The Inventory of Life and the Earth Stations
From dynamic to stationary states of action, the way we understand creation has rapidly morphed in our epoch, its conflict with form causing a return to the primordial space of existence – our thoughts. Mathieu Lehanneur, Michele De Lucchi and Davide Angeli reach to extend their work across different but interconnected development fields; The Inventory of Life is the exhibition Mathieu Lehanneur choreographed for the Triennale in Milan, blend- ing four projects: State of the World, 50 Seas, How Deep is Time, and Live/Leave.
Evolving from The Earth Stations, the research project created in 2018, The Satellite Stations are an elongation of Michele De Lucchi’s visual translation of the future. They are a series of sites he created alongside AMDL CIRCLE, the studio founded by De Lucchi and of which Davide Angeli is deputy-director. Architecture and design redeem their role in projecting reason in mind, a projection from which action can emerge.
The moment to act
How can one know when the moment to act is? Imagine entering a room where humankind’s trace can be collectively and singularly admired as an object of design. Despite its decorative role, creation outgrows the limits of aesthetics; it can now be a communication channel, a platform for statements allowed to travel through a tridimensional language.
Milan Design Week 2022, Mathieu Lehanneur
The Inventory of Life, the exhibition ideated by Mathieu Lehanneur and presented at the Milan Design Week 2022, is a sign of the time – a materialized memory record. Four large-scale installations equip the viewer with information about the harmed environment, mental health, and marine ecosystems, all withdrawn from scientific data statistics and satellite-generated photographs dedicated to the investigation the project undertakes. Destabilizing and damaging,
The Inventory of Life depicts a series of actions divided by culture and geography
How can one react in a positive way? Imagine finding a balanced relationship between human nature and space, the freedom to cultivate instinct and impulse with responsibility and devo- tion. Realized as pavilions, greenhouses, or spaces dedicated to contemplation, The Satellite Stations are architectonic and philosophical reactions to the current situation of our planet.
AMDL CIRCLE is the studio where architecture merges with multidisciplinary participation; conducting research based on the iridescent layers of human experience. Time is one of the focus characteristics of The Satellite Stations formed by six space forecasters: the Chapel of Light, the Perspective of the Mind, and the Mystical Laboratory alongside three relational environments: the Garden of Culture, the Party House, the Acoustic Stage.
ML I was acting, but most of all, reacting to actual data from The World Health Organization presenting the suicide rates in every country. One particular note was the disproportion between a specific country’s economic or cultural development and the rates of life-taking actions. I wanted to observe things in their actual state. When I presented this project I saw people responding with emotional participation; it was not about the piece and the design itself, but it was about understanding the message.
Fostering communities by projecting an idea of how the future can look
DA The intention comes from something different from one of the first things we are taught to build in architecture, which is how to make walls – walls that can separate people from each other, creating distance and segregation. We want to repurpose this wall in ways that would bring people closer, fostering communities by projecting an idea of how the future can look.
We do not have a client, a direct user of our work, that would ask for a product serving a spe- cific purpose. The question is not asked, but there is an answer. We could create something that doesn’t have any function while enabling a future. This way, we all become clients of our work. It is about creating solutions and starting from within. We have to start from us as a user and visualize what we would want our future to look like.
Everything is either a disruptor or a generator
This project has its foundation in the research we started years ago, which is The Earth Stations. It is an attempt to think about architecture in a way that can satisfy not only the needs of a user but also comfort on a personal level. Creating in any form is an act of craftsmanship because it is about making something existing inside the mind become real and tangible, transforming thought into an image or a form.
It comes from the need for people to evolve, grow by extending their capabilities and relationships inside a community, and continue to be in motion. Because nothing is in a static condition. Everything is either a disruptor or a generator, much like the air we breathe, exhaling and generating it to be able to inhale it again. One of the principal components of creation, be it architecture or design, is having a multidisciplinary mindset and reaching out to many different fields and disciplines.
To ideate The Earth and The Satellite Stations, we consulted and had conversations with psy- choanalysts, sociologists, anthropologists, physics, and so on to imagine these Earth Stations rightfully. As stations, they symbolize something that can help us stay on our planet, not flee to space or someplace else, but remain and rebuild our civilization.
Hybridize different worlds, adding complexity
DA There is also this role that we believe we have as architects and designers, where we are not only the ones to create a product, a building, or a space, but we create the behaviors of the people occupying these places. Even more, we inspire their creativity and their need to build something. To hybridize different worlds, adding complexity and making people feel uncomfortable while also experiencing the unexpected: the unplanned and the unpredictable are the essences of curiosity that make us alert.
ML Our projects have some focal points in common: the absence of a client and precise function. When I created The Inventory of Life, I didn’t have a user in mind. I thought the idea was to transform the information and data into tangible objects that anyone could grasp and understand. Secondly, I also wanted to collaborate with sociologists and psychologists, especially when we were debating creating Live/Leave that approaches a sensitive theme. But it is meaningful to open these conversations with people from different fields to understand the bigger picture.
MDL There is also the need to continue the dialogue between generations, learning how to acquire knowledge from each other; we must unlearn things we have become accustomed to and no longer need. We should focus on learning how to apply knowledge and practice it. Despite the progress in our society, not much has changed. The role of an architect is not only to create but also to provoke imagination in people, and give flow to their ideas and vision. Our research projects attest, creation is indispensable for advancement. Nevertheless, there
is the question of: where does one create? Where does one act?
Perceiving reality vs actual reality
DA We discovered when talking with scientists about The Earth Stations project development that only 20 percent of what is perceived is reality. Meanwhile, the other 80 percent comes from how we see this reality based on our experience, education, or our subconscious, and information we are still discovering.
MDL We can use virtual reality, go to the Metaverse, and go to Mars, but it is still useless if the need to sustain life does not stem from our thoughts. We could go to a different planet, MDL and then what would happen? We would consume the resources we own there, damaging the ecosystem so we could move elsewhere afterward. Our thoughts are the source of every- thing we do. There is no other reality than the one we have.
ML Is dreaming not a form of reality? We might not see it as tangible or real as our everyday life. It is still a place in our minds where we live and visualize things, interactions, and so on. Everything that occurs in our dreams seems real whenever we wake up, changing our moods and thoughts.
The use of materials resembles chemistry, where to obtain a reaction, you need to mix the elements that could create it. A reaction can happen regardless of the elements you use, whether material or digital, but it is still a reaction in contact with the user.
I was showcasing The Inventory of Life. More people saw it on social media, on a screen, and in the images than people who visited the show. It made me wonder if there was a point in creating it at all? If it can exist in a bi-dimensional image, is there any need to make it in a tridimensional form?
MDL When you look at The Earth Stations, they are architecture in power. We need to create something that can be transformed into fertile soil and be reused in the future, generating future life.
Lehanneur’s Materie Brute and AMDL CIRCLE
Mathieu Lehanneur trusts ‘la materie brute’, the rawness and naturalness already existing in the environment. «He reminds us that everything is in our hands», as the exhibition cura- tor, Maria Cristina Didero, suggests. Unconsumed by usage, the design Mathieu Lehanneur pursued is responsible and calculated. Once with the Memphis design movement of the Eighties, and now with The Earth Stations research continuing since 2018, Michele De Lucchi experiments with shapes as a characteristic of materials, encountering the needs of different contexts.
The AMDL CIRCLE studio is about form. It is about circular thoughts that can fuel circular ecologic, sustainable economies. The Earth Stations are community buildings where the population, instead of dividing, regroups. By channeling personal dreams and values, architecture acts towards reteaching coexistence, asserting pleasant behaviors between people and their environments.
To make this possible, within the Satellite Stations research project, the architects and designers of the studio insist on rediscovering the nobility of wood as a material that inhibits nature and generates it. The Satellite Stations are meant to transform into humus, their decay expected while beneficial for the Earth and its ecosystems. Instead of neglecting or denying time, using materials reacts to its acknowledgment, testi- fying it. The Satellite Stations are made of wood since it belongs to nature’s infrastructure, continuing the development circle.
Playing with materials means playing with time
DA When I chose to study in this field, I was visualizing myself in the future, when I would be old, how everything passes through time and nothing lasts forever. It made me think about whether something can become eternal, and architecture seems to be the closest thing we have to be timeless.
ML Playing with materials means playing with time. The revelation I have with people working on different products is that the object might live longer than the person who designed it. I won- der whether the products deserve to live that long. When designing, I must take into account our creations’ durability.
The aspiration of eternity
MDL If we think of the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans, they were all aspiring to eternity and built something that could last forever. Now we cannot keep on making things with the same approach. We cannot keep building for the future when everything is done now is obsolete. We create products that last at most twenty years, but what is eternal are our thoughts. Everything else will perish. Water, wind, and wood can all provide it. We need to know how to generate and use it. Our Satellite Stations were designed with wood because we wanted to imagine a fertile architecture, and it is the only material that can never harm nature and the ecosystem since it is the foundation of life. It helps heal the forest as a soil fertilizer.
ML Should we remain optimistic when thinking about a solution, or should we see things for how are they? Our current climatic state is getting worse, and even in the discussion I have with my son, he is convinced he will live until the end of this world. The first thing we can do to act is to understand the symptoms. I see it that when you have a problem, you first need to understand there is a problem. Like when you’re going to a doctor, you are faced with the symptoms, making you face the disease and follow the actions you need to take to heal it. We need to face the reality of things.
People need to learn to stay in front of a problem to act on it
MDL People need to learn to stay in front of a problem to act on it. There’s a human tendency to drift away from an issue. Even before climate problems, social problems and living togeth- er must be solved.
ML We shouldn’t predict. We can’t look into the future and know how things will be. The crisis we are facing now has material issues we couldn’t have forecasted. Therefore we can’t act in anticipation of what will happen. By showcasing the urgency of our current situation, we can change the present.
DA We cannot predict, but we can give an image of the future visions and answers to the consid- erable and urgent need to change our way of thinking and living.
Michele De Lucchi
Architect. He was among the protagonists of radical architecture movements such as Cavart, Alchemy and Memphis. Awarded the honor of Officer of the Italian Republic for merits in the field of design and architecture, he is Full Professor at the Faculty of Design at the Politecnico di Milano and Academician at the Accademia Nazionale di San Luca in Rome.
Mathieu Lehanneur
Mathieu Lehanneur is one of the few designers of his generation with a multi-disciplinary approach to creativity: his projects stretch the realms of product design and object to architecture, craft and technology. Lehanneur thrives on creating projects that are intended to encourage wellbeing.
Davide Angeli
Deputy Managing Director at AMDL CIRCLE. Experienced Creative Director with a history of working in the architecture & planning industry. Skilled in Design Direction, Design Supervision and Art Direction, Angeli graduated from Istituto Europeo di Design.
