Florence Biennale – Spot on Schools Exhibition

(Videography, postprocessing and intangibles by James Diewald, w/o whose invaluable help the project would not have been possible)

In 2005 I was invited to present student work at the Spot on Schools Exhibition, part of the International Biennale of Architecture in Florence, Italy.  I had been teaching senior architecture studio at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio for 2 years and leading a BIM Lab/Seminar in partnership with the Gehry Technologies education initiative.  Seizing on the opportunity to showcase the depth of academic explorations at Miami, I extended the invitation to include work produced under the guidance of prof. Murali Paranandi, whose research focus is on intersections of architecture and media.

Organized by Image, an Italian clearing house/communications agency, the Beyond Media Festival takes place in Florence since 1997.   The festival events run the gamut: exhibitions, conferences and workshops, lectures and screening of videos, all inspired by the promotion of architectural culture.   The Spot on Schools exhibition selects twenty or so schools of architecture worldwide who are invited to present studio work congruent with the objectives of the festival.

The work of 7 students was selected for the Miami University entry in the exhibition.  The students and I then proceeded to design and produce the exhibit to be installed in Stazione Leopolda, a former  railway station, which is one of the festival venues.  The exhibit consisted of:

1. Exhibit Panels; 20 Pcs. 24”x36” panels.  Prints on translucent polycarbonate
2. Substructure; 85 m. total length of steel cable and stainless steel hardware, mounted in tension between the floor and the ceiling of the exhibit hall, creating a support gridwork
3. White Lycra; 12 Sq.m.  stretched within the tensile support gridwork.
4. Lights and electrical hardware; 20 pcs.
5. Laptop computer
6. LCD projectors.

The cable support structure was prefabricated in Oxford and installed at Leopolda over 2 days. The panels were suspended from the substructure by means of simple U-clamps and back lit.   The rear side of each panels was equipped with a contraption made of Lycra fabric, stretched back to create tent-like reflector “light boxes” with a light at the apex, which emitted a mild glow.  The minimal hardware and light halo around the panel edges reinforced the effect of floating in space.  One of the background cells was flat to become a screen for video projected from the back of the rig.

The exhibition was displayed at Stazione Leopolda in the first 2 weeks of December 2005.  Upon returning to the US, we reinstalled it with minor modifications at the CAGE gallery of the School of Fine Arts, Miami University.