THE MONSTROUS FIGURES AND THE INVISIBLE FIGURES

STARTT wins the Honourable Mention of the RomArchitettura 06 Award with the project for the renewal of the rooms of the Hôtel de Galliffet: a scenographic permanent exhibition, made of MONSTROUS AND INVISIBLE FIGURES which inhabit the indoors of the Italian Cultural Institute in Paris.

The renewal of the Hôtel de Galliffet enhances the monumental halls of the headquarters of the Ministry of Talleyard and defines the scenarios needed for the cultural activities of the Italian Cultural Institute in Paris.
The original beauty of the rooms was compromised by the addition of technical elements designed to solve only the functional aspects, which hided the frescoes, decorations and neoclassical architectural elements.
The project is based on the idea to free the existing space from all the successive additions and animate it according to an antithetical pair of spatial devices, made up of monster figures and invisible figures.
The former ones, zoomorphic, inhabit the accueil and the hourglass room: a series of minimal design elements allude to fantastic figures, where the head becomes the support for the exhibition poster and the body is dismantled to form bases. Created by combining individual metal parts, the monsters can take on different configurations, adapting to the needs of the curator and the works on exhibit.
The invisible figures are mimetic supports and devices hidden within the architectural parties of the different rooms. In the space for events, the stage containing the retractable screen allows to appreciate the 18th century trompe-l’oeil design, where the architectural parti of the interiors frames real and imaginary nature: that visible beyond the windows, that reflected between the columns and painted on the vault.