Giacomo Pala: TRANSforming

Since the beginning of its existence, mankind has transformed objects, things and concepts to produce novelty: a constant transformation of things. The result of these transformations is an increasingly complex world where histories, cultures, technologies and nature are constantly changing, blending into ever more complex hybrids.

To discuss this theme, this exhibition builds on a precedent: MAN transFORMS, an exhibition curated by Hans Hollein in the 1970s. In this exhibition, famous for re-imagining the exhibition space, what Hollein called “typical objects” (typische Gegenstände) were also exhibited. Among them, bread: something that all civilisations have, sometimes sacred, sometimes not; always the same, yet always different—itself the result of a transformation of raw materials.

This exhibition transforms this theme. The main space is about the transformation of the exhibition itself into something new: the transformation of transFORMS. This section is the result of a series of formal alterations. Here you can find objects produced from a transformation of bread: scanned in 3d, then 3d-printed in clay in collaboration with cera.LAB; in turn embedded within an object composed as an abstract and figurative whole that refers to the bread itself, on the one hand, and to the second room, on the other. There, one can find a more direct reinterpretation of Hollein’s work: a grid of breads, drawn by Hollein’s team, yet transformed into a new spatial environment.

Overall, this exhibition presents a number of ways of producing novelty through transformation, generating a range of spatial settings, and objects, both literal and non-literal; abstract and figurative; colourful and neutral.

Giacomo Pala is an architect and researcher based in Innsbruck where he is a research associate at the Institute of Architectural Theory of the Architecture Faculty. Previously, he has taught workshops at several institutions, including the CUINDA program at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok (2020) and collaborated with a few practices. Through his work and research – alone or in collaboration with others—he seeks to address both theory and design in the attempt to theorise and formalise architecture as a syncretic experience: a dialogic object capable of combining different parts, ideas, aesthetics, forms and policies.

MAGAZIN is an exhibition space for contemporary architecture in Vienna run by Jerome Becker, Matthias Moroder and Florian Schafschetzy. MAGAZIN presents the work of local and international architects in solo exhibitions that are especially conceived for the spaces in the Weyringergasse location—framed by corresponding lectures, panel discussions and publications.