Resistance Through Urban Creation.
What happens when brick-making becomes an act of resistance? Giovanni Amerio, aka GGTHH, challenges the neoliberal perfectionism of modern cities with a collective action that turns the construction process into a subversive gesture.
Architecture, urban planning, and design have never been neutral practices. Every decision within these fields carries political and economic values, shaping cities according to power structures that often favor certain social groups while marginalizing others. With his project Sharp Partitions and Parasitic Bricks, Giovanni Amerio, known as GGTHH, explores how urbanism and architecture have absorbed and reinforced the neoliberal values of contemporary cities, becoming tools of social exclusion and gentrification.
Amerio uses the brick—the quintessential architectural element—as a metaphor for the ideological construction of cities. While the brick represents the fundamental unit of physical construction, its standardized and regulated production embodies the enforced homogenization that characterizes urban transformation under neoliberalism. The artist introduces the concept of “glitching” into the brick-making process: a deliberate disruption that alters its shape and function, generating unpredictable and unique architectural elements.
This performative act is not just aesthetic but political: it challenges the idea of perfection imposed by industrial production mechanisms and proposes an alternative based on plurality and spontaneity. Through a collective act of ‘making,’ Amerio invites communities to reclaim the construction of public space, resisting the exclusionary logic that dominates contemporary urban design.