"Andrea Branzi is passionate about the morphology of urban space; he breaks down the accepted codes and vigorously shakes the foundations of the ever-present conventions... this insatiable troublemaker continues to disrupt the status quo and places humans and nature at the centre of his thinking."

Andrea Branzi, Trees
@ Carpenters Workshop Gallery, Paris
March 10, 2012

"Trees" represents a continuation of his thinking on architecture. He creates a minimalist space of shelves, veritable pieces of micro-architecture made from aluminium that spread out in neo-plastic bursts like a Mondrian. However, through the splits in the frame, Andrea Branzi introduces trunks and twigs gathered in the wild. his strange encounter.

This strange encounter that began in the eighties with "Animali domestici", questions the duality of the nature-culture relationship.

all photographs courtesy of Carpenters Workshop Gallery

“When birch tree forests are pruned or agricultural cultivations of fruit trees are picked, they are dispersed or burned. I have always been fascinated by these parts of nature, that continue to give off a grand expressive force, more powerful when they are combined with modern, perfect and industrial materials. They become mysterious, always diverse, unique, unrepeatable and somewhat sacred presences. Trees, trunks and branches are part of our ancient culture but also of actual culture, because in the age of globalization, design searches to trace recognizable ‘anthropologoical’ platforms.

The collection, ‘Trees’ consists to place simple, everyday objects, books, and images next to the strange presence of branches and trunks, like in the reality of the world.”

- Andrea Branzi








all text and photographs courtesy of Carpenters Workshop Gallery



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"the weak metropolis"

...
when does a metropolis collapse?
.
"Governments on both sides of the Atlantic have avoided grappling with fundamental problems, counting on renewed growth to help borrowers who cannot afford to pay and creditors who cannot afford to walk away. "
- NYtimes.

“What is it like to live in a city during the age of globalization, the Internet, changing workplace situations and imbalances both ecological and economic?” - Andrea Branzi





"But four years into this age of financial contagion, the global economy cannot seem to pick up steam. Every promising leap seems to end with a sickening thud. The easy answers are exhausted, and political leaders face a rising tide of anger that is constraining their ability to make more difficult choices..." - NYT (read here)

"In contrast to the construct of the historic Charta, the so-called “Weak Metropolis” is a living framework which reacts flexibly to societal and political changes in the urban context, and further develops existing situations which have evolved over time. Andrea Branzi invites discussion of the following question:“what is it like to live in a city during the age of globalization, the Internet, changing workplace situations and imbalances both ecological and economic?” and lays out ten “modest recommendations” as to how the city could be understood according to new social and functional logics.

He considers the industrialized city as a rational mechanism for growth and prosperity to be an outdated concept. He believes that the urban development of the 21st century should not follow an established set of rules or separation of functions according to a pre-developed plan. His “New Charter of Athens” is a manifesto not for the city of the future, but much rather for the city of the present with all its deficiencies and contradictions."

taken from here.

image: Andrea Branzi,
PROJECT “Epigrammi” photography Giacomo Giannini

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