Author Description

The book is dedicated to a fresh and interesting building - that can be classified as a little exhibition pavilion. Watching the old images kindly provided by the Franco Albini Foundation Archive, many theoretical and practical aspects of these works do not stand out clearly: the photographic medium seems to be unable to convey topics and suggestions of these experiments. The high concentration of contents normally given to the theme of pavilion seldom makes an architectural manifesto out of this particular typology, but when it happens, so many factors have to be taken into consideration, that the overall perception becomes harder. The fact that the eventual aim of this typology is to advertise something, happens to even raise the rate of complexity, pushing the architect towards a design that must not compete with the advertised brand. Does it seem little to you? It is, anyway, already quite enough to justify treating those 'small works' as equals of the bigger and important architectures. The building is overload: proportions, rhythms, geometry and other architectural elements are shown in the book through the usual architectural 3d model and through 'invisible edge' views. This way of presenting the buildings helps to understand for the first time, having removed the 'chiaroscuro' and the back lighting of the photos, the structure and the exhibition apparatus designed by Albini. As a scientific experiment, important results are revealed: an astonishing presence of 'transparency' and a deep and the hard battle among container and content.