THE LONG RUN

Public Theatre

@London Festival of Architecture (Finalist)

THE LONG RUN

Public Theatre

@London Festival of Architecture (Finalist)

London,

2022

“A system of theatrical organization whereby the play performed runs as long as there is an audience for it.”

The long-run is a modular space that can be assembled in three different configurations to put in dialogue the public space with the people who inhabit it. It is a sort of “thrust stage” - a platform that protrudes into the audience. In the same way, we are constructing this device that invites the audience to appropriate the stage and make use of Phoenix Road and shared roads and streets. The long-run is a theatrical device composed of nine wooden benches, which are held together by 18 poles where at the top we find a small knob that reminds us of the finials and washing lines and pegs of Somers town. The finials of “The long-run are simultaneously identitarian and functional elements: they work as parts of a simple pulley system for the benches, as anchor points for cables and for potential shading canopies.

This public performative platform can be adjusted in scale and be assembled in different conformations depending on the desired activity. The first configuration is a platform 7.2 x7.2 m which can be used for chatting, laying down, picnics and playing. If lifted, the benches form a seating area - a conversation pit. Here a series of canvases and drapes can be attached on each side to allow students to draw, sketch and present. In collaboration with Scene & heard the space can be used throughout the two weeks of intense playwriting weekend, where children with dramaturgs rehearse their plays. In that case, the space is enclosed and the drapes become an ever changing cyclorama.

The stage set acts as a public affirmation space for children and adults to witness their creativity. And when the play is ready to be shown, the thrust stage becomes a seating stall/tribune, inviting the public to see the play in this third arrangement. The long-run, due to its simple profile, could be adapted to multiple sites - our proposal is to place it as a congregational bridge between the public sidewalk of Phoenix Road and the currently unused garden of Oakshott Court. “From grey to green” - we believe that the first act of this process should be about valorising the multiple existing green spaces of Somers Town. We want to create a device that can be recognized as a point of reference, a meeting place in the neighbourhood to socialise, rest and play which makes you aware of the importance of public streets, making it a space of permanence rather than just a passage.

During the weekend of Phoenix road closure, we will disassemble the stage into a long table that occupies the whole street. The fourth configuration will see a tea ceremony as in the past - a magnificent 64.8 metre collective pathar mangshor jhol on a Sunday. Moments of ordinary life will be emphasised and brought to life by the creative daily use of this long-run.

Lemonot

with

Gianmarco Dolfi

Camilla Tinti

FAVOLE IMBANDITE

Illustration and Exhibition

@121 + _Milan Design Week

FAVOLE IMBANDITE

Illustration and Exhibition

@121 + _Milan Design Week

Milano,

2022

Favole Imbandite ("Laden Fairy Tales") is an illustration that Lemonot designed for the book "Playgroundind" - curated by Domitilla Dardi and published by Corraini Edizioni. Together with 9 artists, illustrators and architects, Lemonot staged and exhibition at 121+ during the Milan Design Week 2022.

"This project is a real walk among objects where the scale of the game is blurred with that of the buildings, and the distribution of spaces seems to evoke the urban landscape. In fact, the playing devices create a proportional leap in which visitors find themselves travelling among elements that have the definition and conformation of possible architectural scenarios of a utopian and science fiction city. Even the connections between the various buildings are shown as walkways on the walls and ramparts of a city that is both ancient and futuristic." - Domitilla Dardi

Illustration by

Lemonot

with

Gianmarco Dolfi

Book by

Domitilla Dardi

Corraini Edizioni

GASTRONOMIC PALAPA

Play

Edible pavilion

@Mextropoli Festival (1st Prize)

GASTRONOMIC PALAPA

Edible pavilion

@Mextropoli Festival (1st Prize)

Mexico City,

2021

"La comida, más que las especulaciones místicas, es una manera segura de acercarse a un pueblo y a su cultura" Octavio Paz.

The Complejo Cultural Los Pinos, once the Mexican presidential house, from September 2021 to March 2022 became the context for Gastronomic Palapa - a temporary polysemic place - a temporary pavilion design for Mextropoli 2020 in Alameda Central and then built there one year later due to the pandemic.

A public chillies dryer A convivial cathedral of sounds, smells and colours A collective mesa at the urban scale

The pavilion is mainly composed of two parts: a triangulated support structure and a playful accumulation of evolving, changeable organic elements. Completely filled with Chiles Secos and red Zacates, it forms an inverted thatched roof that acts as a communal palapa.

The infrastructure draws indeed inspiration from vernacular Mexican palapas, yet it introduces a clear directionality that recalls the spatial organisation of certain spiritual places: after a compressed - both in height (2.60 m) and width (3.20 m) - entrance, the interiors of this urban chapel rise constantly, towards a relatively tall (6.80 m) and large (9.00 m of diameter) circular apsis, that culminates in a central oculus. It is not constructed with traditional materials like wood and straw, but using just one type of steel angle profile (3x3 inches) - mostly as a simple “V”, or paired as a “T” for the main structure and as an “X” for the legs and the spine.

The pavilion covers an area of 108sqm2. The chillies knotted together define a variegated cloister where glimmers of light draw geometric and organic shadows on the ground, inviting the visitor to enter and experience this multi-sensorial enfilade. The interiors are painted in bright red, while the exteriors are characterised by a quieter grey: this is the main perceptual form of hierarchy for an otherwise very porous space, in strong continuity with its surroundings. There is a series of tables, conceived as overflowing tongues - sticking out from the narrow openings. These three bright red mesas (tables) act as bridges to connect interior and exterior, as privileged surfaces to linger, indulge, look through the colourful beams and to be in direct contact with thousands of edible assemblages.

Gastronomic Palapa performed as a public pantry. It contained rows of hung zacates – more than 1500 – and threads of chiles secos – almost 11000!. These were its main material elements, the ones which constructed its edible iconographical apparatus. Throughout the days, the chillies became brittle when touched and their seeds were heard inside when shaken. Some of them kept on drying, others were sheltered yet partially exposed to the weather: these processes triggered a series of time-based transformations throughout the months, providing unexpected colours, textures and smells - turning the ceiling of the pavilion into a living architectural compound.

The pavilion has just been dismantled and it’s waiting to be re-constructed in a different place in Mexico City. It will again act as an urban pantry or dryer, sheltering new organic, edible fragments. Its assembling and disassembling will always be participatory acts, naturally happening as gigantic collective banquets.

Its main aim is to stimulate people's inventiveness, to become a stage set for spontaneous performances, rather than being a static pavilion that visitors can just contemplate. Gastronomic Palapa wants to delineate a truly interactive, polysemic space, that internalises and augments multiple degrees of publicness. It is an alive shelter to foster instinctive behaviours and to re-write daily, bodily gestures, re-connecting them with unconventional architectural components and materials. It is an architecture to be appropriated and to be bodily consumed.

Designed and curated by

Lemonot

with

Federico Fauli

Anna Adrià

Josue Daniel

La invencible

Photos and Videos

Jose Jasso

Erika Garcia

LIDO FAVARA

Synthetic beach

@Countless Cities Biennale (1st Prize)

LIDO FAVARA

Synthetic beach

@Countless Cities Biennale (1st Prize)

Farm Cultural Park,

2021

La terrazza di Palazzo Miccichè, tappa di Countless Cities Biennale e culmine di Human Forest, è un luogo nobile ed informale, dove indugiare e sentirsi accolti. Un salotto in quota che invita a stendersi, a rilassarsi, a spiaggiarsi – a giocare con il corpo per innescare la propria immaginazione. Lido Favara si rivela all'improvviso come un paesaggio surreale di sabbia lavica, come un osservatorio che guarda fuori mentre si riflette dentro. E' una stanza annidata tra interno ed esterno, tra natura ed artificio, che mira a limare il confine tra l'imprevedibilità dello spazio pubblico ed il calore del focolare domestico.

Archivi d'amore

Le piccole stanze di servizio della terrazza si (ri)vestono per l'occasione, diventano familiari nelle finiture ed intime nei contenuti. Al loro interno ospitano una serie di ritrovamenti: il primo, sopra il battiscopa verde, è proprio la carta da parati stessa – riproduzione pop di un motivo floreale presente al pianterreno di Palazzo Miccichè. Entrando, nei cassetti di due mobiletti in equilibrio sulla sabbia, vi sono invece dei reperti autentici, che Favara – città fragile ma generosa – ci ha di colpo messo a disposizione.

Mentre stavamo allestendo il padiglione, infatti, è crollata una vecchia casa, del centro storico. La casa era disabitata da anni, ma non per questo vuota: avvicinandoci ai detriti, abbiamo chiesto in punta di piedi ai proprietari se potevamo raccogliere tutti quegli oggetti che a loro non interessavano – memorie visive e tattili di parenti a cui non erano legati o, chissà, che non avevano nemmeno mai conosciuto. Abbiamo scoperto un mare di bottoni colorati, pagelle, vecchi libri sottolineati, cartoline e lettere d'amore. Si racconta di fratelli partiti per la Germania, auguri fatti in ritardo, regali spediti con grande insuccesso, punti della spesa mai riscossi, peripezie per gli ultimi esami di Università. Questi frammenti che meritavano di essere raccolti, conservati, e, con cautela, mostrati.

L'archivio di Lido favara, inteso come uno spazio in comproprietà tra i cittadini di Favara e chi vi si affaccia per la prima volta, comincia proprio da qui - dall'intersezione amorevole di storie tangibili e ricordi materiali. Sarà un archivio aperto, che ambisce ad accumulare nuovi pezzi, che ambisce a costruire rappresentazioni molteplici del mondo e sul mondo di Farm Cultural Park.

Una spiaggia sospesa

Sulla soglia, un cartello raccomanda agli avventori di togliersi le scarpe: scalzi, d'altronde, si è più spontanei, più giocherelloni. Un gioco di specchi caratterizza poi l'intera terrazza come macchina teatrale, in cui poter calibrare, dosandole a piacere, illusione e realtà. Camminando a piedi nudi sulla sabbia nera, aggiustando lo sguardo per catturare immagini che rimbalzano, si ha l'opportunità di re-inventare il modo di stare insieme, condividendo creativamente spazi, gesti e momenti. Pochi oggetti adornano questa spiaggia raccolta ma volutamente brulla, libera da impedimenti: un rastrello per disegnare solchi, due lavavetri per mettere a fuoco le immagini riflesse e dei teli da mare dalle dimensioni importanti, per livellare le dune e ricostruire sprazzi di convivialità.

La cupola della Chiesa Madre, che a Favara svetta ovunque, sostenuta dai mosaici colorati della sua facciata, è qui celebrata, moltiplicata – apparentemente ingrandita nel riflesso degli edifici che vi si arroccano attorno. Di notte, la città diventa una lanterna corale, che penetra la terrazza, illuminandone lo sfondo – trasformandolo nello schermo di un cinema muto, naturale e perpetuo.

Designed and curated by

Lemonot

with

Andrea Bartoli

Florinda Saieva

Marco Bellavia

Carmelo Nicotra

Photos

Santo Eduardo Di Miceli

IL GRANATAIO

Performative pavilion

@Spazi Sospesi (Honorable Mention)

IL GRANATAIO

Performative pavilion

@Spazi Sospesi (Honorable Mention)

Firenze,

2021

"Granataio" ( from "granata", which in Tuscany means "broom") is designed as a theatrical machine for the public space of Piazza Luigi della Piccola, consisting of 8 inhabitable and reconfigurable benches. It is a light, geometric and modular infrastructure, covered with 388 brooms - whose branched, resistant and flexible broomsticks shape a peculiar interplay between light and shadows across the entire pavilion. The brooms are recognisable elements from the everyday that invite you to enter this square: with its fibrous, raw and natural consistency, Granataio stands out against the rationalist and imposing background of the student residence.

The pavilion is fluid in form, in materials, but above all in use. As in a game at the scale of architecture, you can move the benches and you can have fun planning collectively different ways of meeting and sharing. More open for artistic performances, more enclosed and intimate for the workshops where you need to concentrate.

The 8 benches are built with plywood panels hooked to a structure in metal tubulars, on which 3 or 4 radial series of inclined brooms are screwed. The set of movable wings on wheels is sufficiently light (the weight of the brooms, per bench, does not exceed 60 kg) to be moved by two people. Each bench is an eighth of an asymmetrical circle, with the two ends of different sizes: one of 45 cm and the other of 135 cm.

When they are all side by side, the benches form an intimate and completely shaded space on the perimeter. However, this is only one of the possible spaces: like sails that plow the square, the wings can be repositioned with ease, creating multiple configurations that support the movements, desires and needs of those who populate the neighbourhood.

Granataio invites a direct exchange between people and the spatial artefact, stimulating a particular process of circularity within the neighbourhood: when the pavilion needs to be dismantled, everyone that has a relationship with the square - business owners students and all residents - will have the opportunity to get a broom, bringing home a piece of the pavilion, to continue to take care both of their households and of Piazza Dallapiccola.

The brooms become the symbol of the emotional and material continuity between the public sphere and the domestic space. The benches, “undressed”, will remain in the square, offering the opportunity to linger and rest that is now missing, while the metal structures can be the basis for swings and other games for children.

Lemonot

with

Camilla Tinti

Gianmarco Dolfi

SERMIENTO

Performative pavilion

@Concentrico Festival (Finalist)

SERMIENTO

Performative pavilion

@Concentrico Festival (Finalist)

Logroño,

2021

The project starts by a simple ritual: storing and reusing sarmientos - branches that are usually trimmed in winter time as a preparation for the vine season. We will collect the bunches from Bodega LAN and nearby wineries to turn them into a construction material. We want to celebrate these leftovers that are usually crammed and burned, by building a theatrical backdrop to the vineyard and El Rincón - able to welcome the visitors into its branches. The singular bunches, once accumulated into a curved, natural yet geometrical pile-up, create a vibrant space to be contemplated, touched and inhabited.

1200 bunches of sarmientos soar over the various trails and plots of Bodega LAN, highlighting the strong material relationship between the artefact and the context. They are interlocked within a wooden structure which is 16 meters long and more than 4 meters high. It acts as a skeleton for the sarmientos that, wrapping the entire structure, slightly cantilevered from its profile, create an heterogeneous natural cladding. This wall is composed of 14 vertical structural modules joined by 6 rows of horizontal bracing. Due to the modular grid structural system, it can be disassembled and built somewhere else in a short period of time. The overall wall dimensions can be adjusted and proportions can be calibrated. Its feet can also be adjusted on the topography of the landscape. The whole construction process can happen without the need of machineries but only through a slotting system mechanism.

The sarmientos stacked on top of each other invite glimmers of light to come through, drawing shadows on the ground and offering shelter from the sun inside the wooden niche. An oculus on one side frames the puente Mantible and the Ebro River. From the other side an enclosed window overlooks the vineyards, inviting people to sit on it and contemplate the grapevines. Its proportions are simultaneously generous and cozy: it becomes a refuge from which to observe the landscape and hear the sounds of nature.

The assembling and the dismantling is a collective process, in which the sarmiento bunches can be recycled either as compost for the grapevines or as embers for preparing a traditional asado.

Lemonot

with

OfficeShopHouse

CIRCOLO

Play

Performative meal

@casa di Belmondo

CIRCOLO

Performative meal

@casa di Belmondo

Belmonte Calabro,

2020

U miegghjiu cumpani è u pitittu. Appetite is the best side dish.

Who designed the lunch? Who did it? The guests, who have become actors and actresses, creating space rather than just inhabiting it - staging it. Their gestures - movements, glances and grunts - which activated abstract, otherwise dormant forms. However, this system of multiple relationships was suggested precisely by those dormant geometries - meant as neutral platforms to awaken intuition. The ingredients - artificial or organic, edible or nearly toxic - everyone juggled between. And then those who procured them for us, with patience, kindness, timeliness and mastery.

All we had to do was to blend everything as you would do in a complex recipe: one of those dishes with many flavors, which must all be distinguished. The intent was to portray different but compatible pieces of everyday life together, and to mix many stories around a large table set - at the scale of the landscape.

There was a great confusion, it seemed a cauldron of bodies, which, moving and eating together, built the space of their own stage. The pungent smell of salmoriglio was more present than the din of the diners. They all cackled, but with their hands, not with their voices: they were absorbed in a sort of industrious silence, busy grabbing and biting the wild cuttlefish, which, roasted on the grill. It was in that precise moment that a week of discussions about what were the role, the identity and the destiny of the Seppie di Belmondo came to a conclusion. The moist scent of pine bark - apparently crunchy, it made you want to eat that too - was a counterpoint to the coldness of the oxidized metal. Those hard and inflexible circles on top of the ground had been forged by a good giant like Gennaro, a blacksmith from Cosenza with such affable, soft manners. They were tables, pans and bowls, inviting but fortunately really rigid, the only cornerstones of that suddenly initiated dance. Everyone was swiftly going back and forth, finally aware of how to recognize the safe parts of the garden, where they could walk, sit and let themselves go. The Seppie and the roasted cuttlefish were scattered everywhere, but they also orbited around one of the round platforms to which that gastronomic procession was anchored. A little further on, there were heaps of colorful fried vegetables, cultivated with enthusiastic effort by Mariella among the ups and downs of Spineto and cooked following precisely all her suggestions. As a last, more orderly outpost, there was what could not be missing: a row of Belmonte tomatoes, cut into thick slices, arranged like colors on a palette and seasoned theatrically from above, as in a propitiatory dance. At first no one came close to them, since those tomatoes seemed so composed, almost inviolable - you could no more than dare to smell them. But then, as soon as someone started to creatively imagine ways to handle those deliberately inflated proportions, the whole symphony of cheerful disorder naturally started right there, from the tomatoes.

We wanted to construct a simple ritual, in which particular habits could emerge and adapt to each other, stimulated by the right architectural props. Actually we hoped, and it happened, that those who were there would eat and perform spontaneously. We didn’t aim to transfigure routines into exceptions, rather we aimed to finally reveal them as exceptional acts.

Directed and curated by Lemonot

with

La Rivoluzione delle Seppie

Photos

Silvia Gin

Nicola Barbuto

Luca Pitasi

Margherita Manfra

MARBLE SALAD

Land Art

@Masseria Cultura

MARBLE SALAD

Land Art

@Masseria Cultura

Puglia,

2020

“Marble Salad” is the main of three spatial still-lifes that have been developed throughout a month-long artist residency at Masseria Cultura, an old vernacular mansion situated in the middle of the countryside in Puglia, Italy.

The project reuses marble debris, collected from various refineries, located in neighbouring villages - then manually interlocked to compose a 4x4m solid platform on the ground. The surface could act as a walkable floor - a stage - or just as a contemplative device - an horizontal tactile and colourful canvas. The precise definition of its borders clashes with the wilderness of the open fields in the backyard of the mansion that surround it.

This area will be soon cultivated and transformed into a vegetable garden - rows of zucchini, aubergines, tomatoes, peas, carrots and purple cabbages will become the updated bucolic frame of the platform.

It’s almost a process of inverted mimesis: the marbles’ polychromy anticipates the organization of the vegetables - the artifice discloses nature.

The notion of time has been fundamental for the artworks, dealing with it in different ways. “Marble Salad” will act as a proper still-life, a permanent frozen snapshot immersed within an iteratively changing environment - the hortus. The other two interventions are instead more ephemeral: “Tra-Forato” is a totem made of hollow bricks, a stage-set for the landscape, a portable scenery flat to frame and construct specific viewpoints; “Red Carpet” was our first spatial intuitive rehearsal in the Masseria, an ironic commentary on the re-usage of humble debris.

The context allowed you to be immersed in nature, fostering both a metaphorical and physical dialogue with the landscape: this dictated not only the timing of the project but also defined the way we used certain materials - exploring issues of permanence, ephemerality and construction rhythm.

The three installations are the result of the collaboration with local old crafters, becoming almost built embodiment of the precious relationship we managed to establish with all of them.

Designed and constructed by

Lemonot

with

Letizia I. H. Tueros

Photos

Nicolò

SALINA ARCHIPELAGO

Urban park

@Larnaca international competition

SALINA ARCHIPELAGO

Urban park

@Larnaca international competition

Larnaca,

2020

The proposal aims to work with and enhance the main characteristics of the plot, both physically and conceptually, to achieve a composition in the form of a large three dimensional mosaic or tapestry.

There are three main threads in which we researched and unpicked the site and its history: -A former tree/flower nursery for the municipality; -The infrastructural antiquities found hidden under or emerging from the ground which show Larnaca’s rich history and importance in the ancient world; -The inherent etymology “Salina” as a place to harvest and store salt in mount forms which are recorded in paintings and drawings until the 17th century.

It is along these threads that our proposal weaves and layers a variety of systems of gardens and public activities, sewn together in an interplay of colour, size and geometry, to celebrate the multi-cultural past and present of the city as a port: a place of import and export, a cultural hub of multiplicities and nationalities, gathering around the Mediterrenean coast.

The synthesis of the organisational system of the park uses a grid of watering infrastructures emanenting from the ancient aquaducts of the area and incorporates all the existing trees, embedding them into the backbone of our landscape whilst meeting the practical/ technical requirements. The system is a working motherboard or green lung which aims to give back to the city and its people.

Space syntax and compositional method. From notation to architectural plan: -The plot is a canvas. From its inception, the proposal attempts to incorporate the existing natural characteristics and planting which assume a primary role in the composition. These trees become preliminary nodes in the evolution of the drafting and compositional system of the proposal. -A bold continuous loop takes form around the park boundaries, weaving the entire site as one generous simple gesture that seeks to define the space. This becomes the main access route and the synthetic element along which our proposal evolves. -The circular motion creates two opposite diagonal subdivisions that we envision as a rock garden. These spaces offer a natural low maintenance setting. -A horizontal frame is applied to highlight the existing perimeter path and to restore the existing circulation route of the plot. -The horizontal bead or threads of the frame extend from west to east to add an element of rhythm, distance and scale. This becomes part of the system and practical logic for the design of the park that incorporates water systems and determines distances for its planting by adding structure and color. We connect this system to the existing trees to organise the core of our archipelago. -An archipelago of islands are therefore anchored along the horizontal grain of the tapestry and incorporate the existing geometries of the space, as well as trees, which we studied during our visit to the site. The goal is to tease out the concept of land management, ‘archeology’, of tree nursery and garden. The islands introduce varieties of field typologies, vegetation, colours and activities in the park, amalgamating in the composition.

The planting scheme establishes a natural design which includes and respects the native species and the existing vegetation. The proposed vegetation is resilient to Cyprus weather, in particular the drought of summer months. One of the main features of the proposal is its materiality, inspired by the geology and history of the city of Larnaca. Raw materials and materials from the earth, are managed with different techniques and energies to create a new topography with parallels to quarries, the Salina and the gardens.

In any form of artificial garden or partially landscaped garden there must be an underlying structure; a canvas or grid geometry to define and structure the systems. This is also similar to the natural weaving of a piece of wallpaper but also the creation of a multidimensional landscape composition that incorporates structure, depth and colour to make it understandable and beautiful. Visitors are free to roam and immerse themselves in this rich, thick tapestry of composition, with paths of experiences and scales that bring elements of Larnaca as a natural landscape into a miniature cartography, a physical archive to be mentally absorbed in its entirety and for one to dwell upon.

Lemonot

with

Urban Radicals

Christophoros Kyriakides

Adam Harris

Images

Sonia Magdziarz