Rituals of Solitude

In the summer of 2020, a group of twelve architects undertook a week-long artistic residency, confined within the rooms of a ruined house on a small island in the Venetian lagoon: one per room, in complete solitude.

The house was an almost exact replica of what was once believed to be an unrealized project by American architect John Hejduk: The House for the Inhabitant Who Refused to Participate.

Built in the 1970s on a private island by Contessa di Tesserata—without Hejduk’s knowledge—the replica of The House for the Inhabitant Who Refused to Participate faced impending demolition, as its new owners intended to replace it with a luxury glamping resort. The Unfolding Pavilion reached an agreement with the owners, securing a contract that permitted a temporary occupation of the house to carry out twelve site-specific installations as part of a one-week artistic residency. The sole stipulation was that the project’s outcome would remain confidential until after the house’s demolition. Adhering to this agreement, the project proceeded as planned, and in December 2020, the house was sadly demolished.

The remarkable story of the replica of John Hejduk’s House for the Inhabitant Who Refused to Participate is at the heart of Rituals of Solitude, a transmedia exhibition in three acts curated by Daniel Tudor Munteanu and Davide Tommaso Ferrando, first presented on the occasion of the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale in 2021.

Conceived amid the global lockdown, Rituals of Solitude is a travelling exhibition that explores the proliferation of fake news, the reversal of the traditional relationship between private and public space; the paradoxical rituals through which homes are inhabited; the ways visual technologies are domesticated as tools for self-representation and connection; the accumulation, fetishization, and display of objects in domestic interiors; and the states of solitude created by forced isolation.

Participants: (ab)Normal, Alina Mihăescu, Aristide Antonas, Bart Lootsma, Cenk Güzelis, Cruz Garcia & Nathalie Frankowski (WAI Architecture Think Tank), ErranteArchitetture, Fosbury Architecture, Giovanni Benedetti, hund (Ernesto Bellei, Federico Bergonzini, Antonio Alessandro Di Cicco, Simone S. Melis), James Taylor-Foster & Anton Valek, Fala Atelier, Laurian Ghinițoiu, Mariabruna Fabrizi & Fosco Lucarelli (Microcities / Socks Studio), MAIO, Matteo Ghidoni, Shumi Bose & Space Popular, Traumnovelle, and Uwe Brunner.

Daniel Tudor Munteanu is a practicing architect and curator based in Suceava, Romania. His work was exhibited at the 5th Urbanism\Architecture Bi-city Biennale in Shenzhen in 2013 and at the 18ᵗʰ Venice Architecture Biennale in 2023. His writings were published in magazines such as San Rocco, Log, Volume, and OASE. Daniel is the founder and editor of the research project OfHouses—a collection of old forgotten houses. 

Davide Tommaso Ferrando is an architecture critic and curator, particularly interested in the intersections between architecture, city and digital media. He is Research Fellow at the Faculty of Design and Art of the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano. He is a regular contributor to The Architectural Review and his writings were published in magazines such as Log, Casabella, and Volume. Davide is the author of The City in the Image (Vibok Works, 2018), Building Stories (Letteraventidue, 2023), and City of Legends (Krisis Publishing, 2024).

Daniel and Davide had initiated and curated the Unfolding Pavilion at the 15th, 16th, 17th and 18th Venice Architecture Biennale, curated the Timișoara Architecture Biennial—Beta 2022, and authored the book Another Breach in the Wall (Solitude Project, 2022).