“Talamo” [from lat. thalămus] is an Italian word with multiple meanings. Since the classical age it has indicated the bridal chamber and in literature and poetry, by extension, the nuptial bed. In mediaeval representations it was the stage on which liturgical dramas were performed, while in anatomy it denotes the central part of the brain.
It is our bodies’ information relay station: it processes the sensory signals – including motor signals – before sending them to the brain’s cerebral cortex for interpretation. It also plays a role in sleep, wakefulness, consciousness, learning and memory.
Within the premises of BASE, TALAMO will be a performative – hanging and inhabitable – sculpture, trying to take on all these nuances.
It will be an immense but light bed, which becomes a room without delimiting a volume, without ever enclosing it.
Lemonot will bring a soft, fluid landscape that will take shape through its incessant movement between floor and ceiling, shaped by the force of gravity and the interactions with various bodies – which will alter, or rather create, its topography.
A restless stage that will originate, first with the performers arisandmartha and then involving the public, fantastic choreographies and configurations – blurring the boundaries between inanimate matter and human bodies. Everyone will be free to express and reinvent their own gesturality, within a small, convivial architecture – which embraces everyone’s physicality and projects it within a dimension of renewed collective confrontation.
TALAMO will be an ergonomic mirror, a cathartic device for everyone’s differences: a place to claim one’s identity, but at the same time where to construct dialogues, learning to accept oneself and others. In its continuous making and unmaking, TALAMO will therefore be a living artefact – in a restless state – conscious of how complicated it is to build shared languages that yet allow for heterogeneity, while rejecting sameness.
Sabrina Morreale and Lorenzo Perri are architects, educators and founding partners of Lemonot – a duo for spatial and relational practices, architecture and performative arts. They graduated together at the Architectural Association and they’re now based between London and Italy.
Their projects re-invent the relationship between urban fabric, public space and human rituals through a wide range of media: pavilions, exhibitions, short films and designed performances. They relentlessly seek new opportunities for togetherness and inclusivity, with a contextual yet transterritorial approach that aims to detect, celebrate and trigger the spontaneous theatre of everyday life.
Sabrina and Lorenzo explore how architects can contribute to a peculiar reinterpretation of the city, defining novel languages and 1:1 experiences, through short and long-term occupational strategies. Dealing with multiple stakeholders at the same time, they often intervene as both facilitators and designers – constructing supporting spatial structures to empower alternative narratives and unexpected interactions – initiating unconventional acts of place-making.
Their constant engagement in academia is a crucial part of Lemonot. In 2018-19, they taught as Adjunct Professors at INDA in Bangkok and they’ve been Programme Heads of the AA Visiting School El Alto (Bolivia). Lorenzo taught at the University of Applied Arts Vienna (dieAngewandte) in Architectural Studio 1 from 2020 to 2023, while Sabrina is currently Studio Master in the Foundation Course at the AA in London.
Since 2022, they have led together the MA Architectural Design Studio 7 – this year titled “Being With-in” – at the Royal College of Art in London, practising conviviality as a gentle form of resistance and spatial activism.
They collaborate with several cultural institutions – including Arquine, La Biennale di Venezia, DPR Barcelona, LINA European Architecture Platform, S AM Basel, Architecture at the Edge (West Ireland) – and our projects have been exhibited and awarded internationally: among the others, at the Young Talent Architecture Award 2016, at the ATT19 Gallery in Bangkok, at the RIBA, at Vienna Design Week, at Bangkok Design Week, at Milan Design Week, at Mextropoli 2021 in Mexico City, at FAR-Architecture Festival of Rome 2022 and at CAFx Copenhagen Architecture Film Festival 2023.
Furthermore, Lemonot is one of the 9 selected architectural practices for the Padiglione Italia – curated by Fosbury Architecture – of the Venice Architecture Biennale 2023, and Sabrina has been appointed as the 2024 Enel Foundation Italian Fellow in Architecture at the American Academy in Rome.
TALAMO is a project supported by Culture Moves Europe funded by the European Union, implemented by the Goethe Institut.
It was created in partnership with Noctis spa,
an Italian company with great artisan tradition, specialized in bedding.
CULTURE MOVES EUROPE
Culture Moves Europe is the programme promoted by the European Union that provides mobility grants for artists and cultural professionals in all 40 countries of creative Europe. It covers the areas of architecture, cultural heritage, design and fashion, literature, music, performing arts and visual arts. It is implemented by Goethe Institut, which qualifies, advises and networks the creative professionals and supports the development of sustainable structures in the cultural and creative industries. With residency programs, cooperations and co-productions promotes the global networking of the cultural operators. To those who work in civil society, it offers free and protected spaces in which an open exchange of views can take place, without abandoning even in times of crisis a dialogue marked by democracy.
NOCTIS SPA
Noctis is partner of We Will Design 2024 and supports the creation of TALAMO. Noctis Spa is a bedding company located in the heart of Italy, in the heart of the Marche. The Company boasts a great artisan tradition that for years has increased, thanks to cutting-edge technologies, continuing to devise innovative manufacturing systems and patented products. His beds have always been an expression of a culture that feeds on the world, its colors, shapes and its suggestions, and translates them into beautiful, comfortable, functional and accessible objects. The care and great passion for details and Made in Italy quality make Noctis products an excellent example of a craftsmanship applied to industrial design, able to harmoniously combine technological, aesthetic and emotional aspects.
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+39 02 36565133We Will Design è un progetto di BASE Milano
PARTNER ISTITUZIONALI
Culture Moves Europe (UE)
PARTNERS
Noctis
TECHNICAL PARTNERS
Veryseri Lab