Artist Edoardo Tresoldi has placed 46 columns in a park in the Italian city of Reggio Calabria to create a permanent installation called Opera.

Built in the park of via Giunchi on the seafront of Reggio Calabria with views across the Strait of Messina to the island of Sicily, the architectural installation was created to be a place of contemplation.

“When I came to Reggio Calabria I found in the park that would have become Opera’s location an intimate and snug spot in which to take a moment from everyday life and contemplate Sicily across the sea,” Tresoldi told Dezeen.

“Contemplation is an occasion of pure listening and connection with the place, Opera’s pillars celebrate these simple moments,” he continued.

In total Tresoldi installed 46 columns, the tallest of which is eight metres high, throughout the park to create a series of colonnades. Each of the columns is made from an open wire-mesh structure and lit from below by spotlights.

By recreating the language of classical architecture in a semi-transparent form, Tresoldi hopes that the installation will encourage people to think about the space they are in.

“Opera is born to celebrate the relationship between the human beings and the surroundings, the Strait of Messina, a magnetic place which I consider the actual eternal monument of Reggio Calabria,” Tresoldi explained.

“I simply wanted to add a further key of reading to a location that is yet able to speak itself,” he continued.

“As in my previous works, classical architecture is a tool to celebrate the sacredness that man finds in places.”

The columns were placed to enhance and frame views across the Strait of Messina, but do not follow the positioning of existing paths with the park.

“The pillars create an experiential path marked by different moments and define multiple openings to the landscape based on the points of view,” said Tresoldi.

“I found it interesting to overlap two different architectural systems – the rationality of the pillars’ distribution and the organicity of the park – by meaning them as two different musical melodies that work together following harmonies and disharmonies. Their disharmonic relationship contributes to create ever-changing architectural compositions.”

Opera opened to the public on 12 September along with a sound installation created by Italian musician and composer Teho Teardonarrated that aims to articulate different parts of the day.

Artist Tresoldi has previously used wire mesh to create a range of pavilions and architectural compositions. In Italy, he reconstructed an ancient Roman church using the material, while in Suadi Arabia he built a multi-sensory pavilion in Riyadh.

Photography is by Roberto Conte.

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Abraham Thomas, former director of the Sir John Soane’s Museum, has been named curator of architecture and design at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Thomas said he was “thrilled and honored” to join The Met as Thomas as Daniel Brodsky Curator of Modern Architecture, Design, and Decorative Arts, a role formerly held by British curator Beatrice Galilee.

Previous roles at Smithsonian Institution and V&A

The position follows a number of architecture and design curatorial roles Thomas has held at institutions in the US and UK – including the Smithsonian Institution, Sir John Soane’s Museum and the V&A.

“He brings with him vast and varied experience and expertise, as well as a proven enthusiastic embrace of collaboration using an innovative approach,” said The Met director Max Hollein.

“Abraham will be a driving force for our rethinking of how we best present, contextualise and collect the intersections, commonalities, and joint ambitions of art, architecture and design.”

Thomas joins The Met at “critical moment”

In his new role, Thomas will be “re-envisioning a powerful programme” that responds to current global events, according to department chairman Sheena Wagstaff.

“Abraham joins the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art at a critical moment, as we develop vital new narratives around architecture and design – especially those that engage with a global context in dialogue with historical examples – drawing upon collections at The Met that are unparalleled in their scope and depth,” she said.

“We are eager to set to work re-envisioning a powerful programme that fully integrates architecture and design into our display of the arts of the 20th and 21st century, using these practices as starting points for a new approach.”

Thomas most recently worked at the Smithsonian Institution serving as its senior curator at the Arts & Industries Building in Washington DC, following a stint as a curator of the institute’s Renwick Gallery American art museum.

Position formerly held by Beatrice Galilee

As director of the Sir John Soane’s Museum – a London museum that was once the home of neoclassical architect John Soane in the 19th century – from 2013 to 2015 Thomas oversaw a redesign of the interiors. He also initiated programmes with educational institutions including MIT‘s School of Architecture and Planning, The Architectural Association, London School of Economics and the School of Art, Architecture and Design at London Metropolitan University.

Thomas was curator of designs at the Victoria and Albert Museum from 2005 to 2013, overseeing its Architecture Gallery and partnership with the Royal Institute of British Architects. Heatherwick Studio: Designing the Extraordinary and 1:1 – Architects Build Small Spaces were among the exhibitions he curated during his time there.

He also co-curated Superstructures: The New Architecture, 1960–1990 in 2018 for the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts in the UK, which is regarded as one of the first exhibitions to thoroughly explore High-tech architecture.

In addition, he has published works and lectured on architecture, decorative arts, craft, graphic design and photography.

The role of Daniel Brodsky Associate Curator of Architecture and Design was first created in 2014 and appointed to Galilee, who left the position last year. During her time in the role, Galilee established and ran the architecture series In Our Time: A Year of Architecture in a Day evenn from 2016 to 2019.

Portrait of Abraham Thomas is courtesy of The Met.

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Safe to say that the most hated chores are either doing laundry or doing the dishes. There is something about warm, dryer sheet scented laundry that kind of makes it worth it, so doing dishes is the most annoying household task in my list. I also feel like dishwashers are so awkwardly located, you have to bend too often and that can be a problem if you have a physical disability or if you are over the age of 26 because you have spent a good amount of time slouching over your devices. To make life easier for us all, Fotile has designed a 3-in-1 dishwasher that actually fits in your sink! Yes, that is correct – your sink is now a place for dirty as well as clean dishes.

This clever design hides your dishwasher and dryer elegantly by welding it to your stainless steel sink. The dishwasher has a larget fillet that facilitates accelerated rotation of water flow to improve the efficiency of wash cycles. Another great perk of it being fitted in your sink is that it reduces the hassle of cleaning inside the appliance. It also has a flat embedded ‘lid’ which makes it easy for you to keep your countertop clean while not sacrificing surface space. Apart from killing 99.99% of bacteria from the dishes, it also doubles up as a fruit and vegetable purifier. Using ultrasonic technology and a turbulent spray, it removes 90% of pesticide residue from your produce. This dishwasher claims to have no blind spots – 360-degree cleaning and drying!

The Fotile dishwasher is perfect for any home but especially urban homes because they don’t come with appliances (trust me, I had to apartment hunt in Manhattan which meant I chose dishwasher over having a living room), even more so when they are traditional bulky washers. Not just small apartments, but any home could benefit from space optimization with this in-sink dishwasher. It is also uses resources more efficiently and cuts the time + energy taken by existing dishwashers into half! Clean, convenient, and (very) cool.

Designer: Fotile

Bright red roofs stand out in the setting of this house in Malalcahuello, Chile, which Santiago firm Guillermo Acuña Arquitectos Asociados has built from CNC-cut wood.

Casa Malalcahuello has an impressive natural setting that includes a mountainous backdrop, the Malalcahuello National Reserve and Lonquimay Volcano to its north, and the nearby Conguillo National Park and Cautín River to the south.

GAAA divided Casa Malalcahuello into two offset gabled volumes – similar to the layout of a rural house the studio completed by the ocean in Chile. Casa Malalcahuell’s volumes are raised above a sloped site by a plinth and arranged so as to offer different vistas from various points inside the house.

“The superior volumes are oriented towards the forest and volcano,” said GAAA. “The common areas are protected by the heavy roof and enjoy a panoramic view to observe one of the most incredible landscapes of Chile.”

Each volume has two pitched roofs with a smaller one laid on top of the larger one to create extra height to the interior of the house.

Casa Malalcahuello’s roofing is made from Instapanel PV6, ridged panels produced by Chilean company Citanc from a material it describes as Zincalum, which is a sheet of steel protected by alloys of aluminium and zinc.

The panels are pre-painted a bold red to stand out in the snowfall, as shown in these photos by Cristóbal Palma.

GAAA said the project was the first in which it used a CNC (Computer Numerical Control) mechanisation to cut the wood for the structure. The design process involved first modelling the house in 3D before sending the initial design to Timber, a company in Temuco, South of Chile that undertook the CNC cutting of the wood.

Timber sourced the necessary amount of wood locally and choosing joins for construction, with GAAA adapting the design along the way.

“We send the model back and forth between our office and Timber, to make the proposal as efficient as possible in terms of the wood used and the joints,” the studio explained.

Wood is then cut, labelled and transported to the site where carpenters follow an instruction sheet to assemble the house. GAAA said the process offered them more control in the materials used, and significantly reduced construction cost and time.

“It was an experience which has led us to entirely rethink the way we undertake the design process and made us to look to traditional carpentry for new possibilities.”

“All these have a positive impact when approaching a project in a remote location, where due to snows in the winter, the window of construction time is limited to only eight months,” it added.

Wood is left exposed throughout the interiors of Casa Malalcahuello, which includes a large open-plan kitchen and living room on the lower level.  There is a fire with a conical-shaped chimney, partially clad in stones, that reaches the height of the gabled roof in one of the volumes.

The floor above is designed with a number of voids to keep the lower level light and airy.

A black spiral staircase leads to upper level composed of the bedrooms. Large windows offer expansive views of the surroundings with glass doors that open onto wood balconies.

Other houses in the nearby area include Prism House + Terrace by Smiljan Radić, which comprises two angular black volumes raised above a sloped terrain near to Conguillío National Park on a stilted, wooden deck.

GAAA was founded by architect Guillermo Acuña in Lo Barnechea. Acuña also designed himself a retreat just off the Chiloe archipelago’s Rilan Bay in the south of Chile. Called Isla Lebe, the project involved renovating an old boathouse and adding a wide wooden stair to the front.

Photography is by Cristobal Palma.

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Working designers among you: Somewhere in your archives, you probably have one drawing that’s the most important one you’ve ever done in your life. Maybe it landed you a coveted job, provided evidence of a leap in skills or resulted in the best product you’ve ever worked on. Would you have trouble picking it out?

For technical illustrator Giorgio Piola, whose career spans more than five decades, his answer is definitive.

“The Lotus 72 sketch was the most important drawing that I’ve done in my life,” he says, referring to an iconic and innovative Formula One car first fielded by Team Lotus in 1970. In the short video below he explains why, and describes what was so special about the car:

What would your 3-minute video on your drawing look like? If any of you ever shoot it, be sure to send us the link.

Also be sure to check out:

Giorgio Piola’s history of F1 steering wheel evolution

Image by Giorgio Piola for Motorsport