LUCE ATTRAVERSO UN'ARCHITETTURA

A Light through Architecture | Luce attraverso una Architettura, Paola Iacucci,  two volumes in translucent slipcase with white silkscreen-printing. The two parts of this book, The Book of the East and The Book of the West, investigate the subtle relation of void and solid in architecture in two different worlds. 

Thanks to Alessandro Orsini for his reading.

 

Luce attraverso un'architettura 

Paola Iacucci

Schelebrugge.editor 2014

di Alesandro Orsini

The first time that I had in my hand “A Light Through Architecture” 1992-2012 I felt the importance and depth of its content. Two books: the book of the west and the book of the east illustrating the entire career of Paola Iacucci, an extraordinary architect and educator which left a mark on everyone that by the circumstances of life had the chance to meet or work with her or simply be her student. Paola Iacucci was born in Rome where she studied at Facolta’ di Architettura and graduated with Ludovico Quaroni. She was part of Atrio Testaccio from 1969-1970. From 1973-2003 she lived and worked in Milan. Around 1980 she began collaborating with Steven Holl, of whom she did his first exhibition outside United States. Paola moved to New York, where she produced majority of the work published in the book and where she taught in many school of architecture from Princeton to her fifteen years tenure at Columbia University. 

The book is a moving evidence of a life spent experimenting on space, to the roots of architecture. A crystallization of ideas, feelings and experiences of spaces pervaded by natural elements, primarily light. Her objects and building become alive thought light, the one that produces those shadows that reveals the power of architecture. In a moment of crisis for the discipline Paola Iacucci ‘s book call to return to the roots of architecture, its construction, its foundations through the inherent phenomena, materiality and archetypes that belongs to it. The drawings contained in the book are liberating. In an era where the excessive formalism and the lack of character in the representation of architecture, her sketches, watercolors, collages and models, resonate powerfully above the unifying and flat panorama of the rendering tools and machines. Quoting her “ To build is to give form in light to the hidden matter of architecture”. The book is a double-volume hardcover publication by Schlebruegge 

Editor designed by Jutta Watch of Say Say Say Inc. In the shadow of the architecture establishment of the critics, and directors of prestigious magazines where her work is often unnoticed, Paola Iacucci and her work are very vivid in the memory of the many students she had taught throughout her career. In an era where architects seem to be distracted from the practice of architecture and experimentation her book call for an awakening to return to the origins of our profession.
She remains active through these days working between New York, Milan and Otranto where she co-founded the BAU Institute.