Le case che siamo by Luca Molinari

Artwork by Maria Vittoria Speri

Le case che siamo by Luca Molinari tells us about the evolution and the different conceptions of the house over time up to the present days. Luca Molinari describes it through different points of view: architecture, art and photography. For this reason I chose to represent the book through the collage technique by combining these three elements.

The first collage is entitled: "Head and Heart".
The house is a sacred place that expresses our essence. It is a space to read carefully to understand our life, our desires. From physical to mental space, because the house is more and more in modern culture a place of public representation of the soul, a labyrinth of our mind and our time, capable of materializing dreams, nightmares and obsessions. Contrary to what happened in the Farnsworth house by Mies van Der Rohe where the owner, Edith Farnsworth, reproached the architect for having created a typically male obsession, cold as ice, and as a male it was not habitable especially by a woman. Edit Farnsworth it is represented in this collage by the "Meisje met de parel" by Jan Vermeer (1665-66), olio su tela, Mauritshuis, L'Aia.

The second collage is entitled: "The Dominant House".
The modern city, the city for everyone, born from the dream of breaking down social barriers and building a democratic and transparent metropolis, has above all produced residential suburbs where millions of people live together. From the small bourgeois villa in the countryside, which corresponds to the affirmation of a family individuality contrasting the need to be together within the urban circle, we soon pass to skyscrapers."La Liberté guidant le peuple" by Eugene Delacroix (1830,olio su tela, Louvre, Parigi) in this contemporary case it represents the freedom and revolution that has been brought to the new concept of house. The greatest revolution was made,infact, by Le Corbusier who created a real living machine, the first Unitè d'Habitation in Marseille, a contemporary manifesto of living. A building in the shape of a city, raised from the ground, with street for public use and a roof equipped with a kindergarten, play areas and an athletic track.

The third collage is entitled: "The House Without Roots".
There are no more roots, foundations, fixed borders, given limits, cities move like people and with them their houses too. Since ancient times, communities have colonized territories by moving from one place to another, adapting to circumstances and to what they owned. Even today, some people do not have a home with roots prefering to move quickly from one place to another with new efficient machine that once stopped becomes a real house. The house is no longer just a defined place but has become a new landscape, an unstable and multiform place in constant evolution. The "Hive Study" by Amy Casey (2007, acrylic on paper, Ohio) represents this new concept of moving houses. In fact, this group of mountain houses are located in the middle of the Jordan desert looking for a space to stop, for a few days or months ... who knows?