Issue 03 – BASICLY MEETS // MON.ARCHI

A talk about the light created from a reasoned randomness.

Mon.archi is a creative-experimental project born from the mind and hands of two young architects from Verona, Filippo Marcolongo and Paolo Zerman. The main feature of the project lies in the ambiguous tension between minimalism and the pure expression of the material, sought in the juxtaposition of contrasting elements. The result is a clean, elegant approach to design, derived from thoughtful, never written, perhaps designed concepts, certainly materialized through the use of rudimentary tools, kept in the disorder of the garage-laboratory where the two architects find inspiration.

Their works are mainly the result of reasoned randomness, that is the natural curious search for novelty that starts from the stereotyped habits of daily life. Light and matter meet, giving life to objects of different light intensity dedicated to the various occasions that domestic life offers.

The research that the Mon.archi undertake is the result of the critical and expertly playful interpretation of tradition, taking as a reference some great names of contemporary artistic and architectural culture including Davide Groppi, Franco Albini and Shiro Kuramata, translating it into objects of recognizable impact thanks to the use of unfinished materials (iron and wood) which reflect the signs of manual processing on them. These characteristics emphasize the physicality of the object in the environment, acquiring a sculptural character.

The cleanliness and the simultaneous naturalness of the shapes allow a high adaptability of the objects to the surrounding environment, intentionally consolidating or distorting the spatial perception.

The goal that the two architects set themselves first is the object-individual interaction, the search for an intimate relationship between who lives the space and what allows its intelligibility.

The quality of the object is simply given by its exact location in space, in its ability to release emotional dismay between drawings of intense light and traces of designed penumbra.