2023 Euroluce Exhibition: Interior Night. Bright Artifacts

Interior Night. Bright Artifacts

Curated by Michele Calzavara

Exhibition Project: Berfu Bengisu Goren

18th – 23rd April, Pavilion 15

An exhibition of architectural images of interiors in which artificial light is the protagonist. 

Corrado Levi, Intervento luci presso DUPARC Contemporary Suites, Torino 2003

A show populated with figures, accents, glows, constellations, rhythms, points, vectors and the occasional “capriccio” of light in which a lightbulb or light source can be made out, creatively inhabiting and transforming the space in a special way.

Oscar Niemeyer, French Communist Party Headquarters, 1966-68, Parigi

It is neither an historical nor a chronological exhibition, nor indeed is it structured according to technical lighting criteria – such as light as a service element and light as a vehicle for information and meaning, with the accent on the latter aspect – but is ordered by interpretation keys, and categories that invite the viewer to look at families of design solutions, particular details, and genuine inventions, as collections of large and small case studies.

Jean Nouvel (con Pipilotti Rist), Sofitel Vienna Stephansdom, 2005-2010, Vienna

Photo Roland Halbe

A selection of dozens of photographs, accompanied by informative comments, illustrate luminous artifacts ranging from small “grafts” to veritable full-scale architectural creations, from great masters to the youngest of designers, past icons rooted in our memories and images that have perhaps been overlooked or forgotten, in a bid to narrate a small, by no means exhaustive inventory of luminous poetics, languages and approaches.

CaSa Colombo and Serboli Architecture + Margherita Serboli, Tyche Apartment, 2015, Barcellona 

Photo Roberto Ruiz

Michele Calzavara

The distinguishing factor of exhibitions on architecture is that the latter cannot be present itself. It has to rely on substitutes, and when it comes to light, photography is one of the most fitting. However, Night Interiors is not a photographic exhibition in the strictest sense, rather a short journey across images that have punctuated modern and contemporary design with interiors containing luminous insights that surprise, give pleasure and are still capable of stoking new ideas.

Guillermo Cacciavillani, Capitan Central Cervecera, 2014, Cordoba 

Photo Gonzalo Viramonte

   Exhibition Concept

The exhibition project is characterised by unusual material choices, with particular focus on their chromatic and luminous properties, and by an architectural conformation that provides for two parallel functions simultaneously: the exhibition space itself, and a space given over to workshops and professional meetings. This duality is catered for by two converging paths and is interpreted by a powerfully geometric floor plan, with volumes that evidence reciprocal relationships as well as the autonomy of the individual parts. 

One Meter Above, 2003, Torino 

Photo Beppe Giardino

The exhibition path has been devised to provide a progressive experience of the space and bring the story to life in a stratified continuum. The photographs on show, of different formats and on different supports, have been grouped into a number of visual clusters that play out on a common horizon, as the through line of the curatorial narrative. 

Franco Albini con Franca Helg, Negozio Sampo-Olivetti, 1958-1960, Parigi 

Photo Fondazione Franco Albini

Rather like intangible instructions, these visual compositions highlight the relationships between the various case studies that make up the narrative categories, visualised through different exhibition modalities: lengthy wall sequences, horizontal planes and luminous surfaces inform a path with an elastic rhythm and affording different levels of fruition.

Arne Jacobsen, Denmark National Bank, 1971 Photo Dissing Weitling

The path culminates in the workshop space, seen as an open, multi-purpose, even intimate area, in which further insights into the subject of artificial light can be gleaned from sectoral professionals.

Jurgen Mayer H, Mensa Moltke, 2005-2006, Karlsruhe University Campus, Germania 

Photo David Franck

Berfu Bengisu Goren

In some ways, thinking about an installation is rather like designing a lighting device: its main purpose is to “shed light” and therefore to render its intangible essence concrete. Whilst also allowing it to be distributed, faceted, filtered, transmitted and transformed. In this case, light is also the subject of the exhibition. Light for images whose representation requires different artifices in order to be evoked each time.

Pierre Chareau, Bernard BijvoetMaison de Verre, 1928-1931 

Photo Parigida Domus 

   More about Exhibition

MICHELE CALZAVARA

Michele Calzavara is an architect and publicist, as well as a designer, academic, critic and curator. He graduated from Milan Polytechnic University, where he studied under Corrado Levi, with a thesis on the relationship between philosophy and architecture. 

He attended the art and philosophy workshop “Thinking of Art” with Jacques Derrida, Carlo Sini and Studio Azzurro. He has exhibited at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, the Triennale di Milano, the Villa Croce Museum of Contemporary Art in Genoa, and the Urban Center in Milan. 

He has contributed to a number of trade magazines including L’Architettura, Cronache e Storia, Domus and Abitare (with which he currently collaborates) and has published books with Italian and international publishers. 

His most important curatorships include the “Laboratorio Italia” section of the “Ailati” exhibition at the XII Venice Architecture Biennale in 2010 (co-curator) and the “Anni Luce” exhibition at the Triennale di Milano in 2016. 

He has been a professor at NABA, New Academy of Fine Arts since 2017. He has edited Inventario (XXIII Compasso d’Oro, 2014) since 2010. He lives, works, and designs in Milan.

Cini Boeri, Casa su tre livelli, 2004-2006, Milano  Photo Paolo Rosselli

BERFU BENGISU GOREN

Goren is an architect and interior designer, living and working in Milan. Born in Ankara, she moved to Italy at the age of 22 following her passion for Italian culture, language and history. 

Her studies have followed an interdisciplinary and international path, with years at METU in Ankara, the University of Bologna and, finally, Milan’s Polytechnic – where she graduated with a thesis titled “Syntax: Form in Architecture”.

She has collaborated with various architectural firms while also developing personal projects, including the site-specific work “Through Metamorphosis”, at the Punta Aderci Nature Reserve, and the exhibition design for “The Italian Jewel of the 20th Century”, held at the Poldi Pezzoli Museum in Milan. 

She strongly believes in the potential of spaces’ formal composition as a means of communication and for the procreation of human experiences.

Gaetano Pesce, Casa Hubin, 1985-1986, Parigi  Photo courtesy Gaetano Pesce Office 

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