Squares. Phenomenologies of the unexpected 

Squares. Phenomenologies of the unexpected 

An incomplete collection of contemporary urban surfaces

The exhibition ‘Squares. Phenomenologies of the Unexpected’ was originally produced, conceived and realised on the occasion of the Many Possible Cities Festival and was on display from 9 June to 7 September 2022 in the spaces of the Manifattura Tabacchi in Florence.

From 7 December 2023 it was presented again with a new exhibition layout in the courtyard of the Rocca Estense in Lugo.

Two models meet and mingle in the design of the panels: that of the ‘board’ – the most classic of the tools used by architects, town planners and landscape architects to promote or illustrate their ideas – and that of the poster, with particular reference to the ‘spontaneous’ forms of artistic and political communication typical of urban public space. The panels are designed favouring the immediacy of visual suggestion, making it possible for everyone to follow the story of this journey, as if it were an album of snapshots.

The ‘site-specific’ installations open a dialogue with the historical pre-existences:

In Florence, the exhibition transforms a portion of the open space of the Manifattura Tabacchi – a boundary area between inside and outside represented by a canopy overlooking the ‘chimney garden’ – into an exhibition gallery. A light wooden diaphragm, a temporary façade, divides the covered area of the portico from the area occupied by the garden, generating two new spaces, the more intimate one below the canopy, and the one outside, in front of the façade, compressed by its presence and more like a public square.

In the Rocca Estense in Lugo, the installation invites people to inhabit a space that is usually perceived as a place of passage for those going to the municipal offices or the roof garden. The exhibition wall constitutes a new interior elevation, ephemeral and traversable, that modifies the proportions of the space, creating new relationships with the existing elements. The base of the wall widens into a seat to welcome passers-by and visitors, inviting them to sit and take their place within the space.

Thus a research develops, parallel to that presented by the projects in the exhibition, which interrogates the spaces in which it is inserted, temporarily transforming them. Once again, it is “an incomplete collection of contemporary urban surfaces”, in which the exhibition poses questions about the present and future of these places: will they remain suspended spaces or will they find their way to become real squares?