IN - HABIT - OUT

Five shadow boxes transform Milanese architecture into domestic miniatures; small fragments of the city to hang, observe, and inhabit. Milan does not reveal itself in tourist guides: it unfolds only to those who wander through its authentic neighbourhoods, among hidden courtyards, green-painted railings and quiet residential buildings. There, even the least experienced eye perceives the succession of eras, styles and architectural languages, as if the city were a stage that suddenly changes its scenery. From this premise arises IN-HABIT-OUT, a collection of five shadow boxes: small architectures to inhabit with objects, to leave empty, or simply to observe as fragments of Milan in miniature. The title, IN-HABIT-OUT, is a neologism that follows a trajectory from the inside outward: “IN” represents intimate and private space; “IN-HABIT” the individual and social condition of inhabiting a space; “OUT” what inevitably manifests from that intimacy into the outside world and therefore into the city. Each shadow box interprets symbolic eras of Milanese living: from the quintessential courtyard house to the most recent forms of social housing. Wood, the material from which the “little houses” are made, is carefully selected and carries with it the flavour of each era: warmth, ornament, grandeur, the taste of its time. Material becomes language and wood, like the city, tells the story of what people leave upon their homes: ambitions, ideals, compromises. These shadow boxes are small suspended scenes, miniature urban theatres. But beware: they are not souvenirs, nor simple decorative objects. They are provocations. Experiments in scale and synthesis, images stripped of their context not to be isolated, but rather to catalyse a personal reflection. The private invades the public, emptiness becomes spectacle, memory becomes art. The five episodes of Milanese living reinterpreted: • Courtyard House; • City Palace; • Liberty Townhouse; • Modernist Apartment Block; • Social Housing. IN-HABIT-OUT is a conceptual and material game: hang, observe, furnish, inhabit. Each piece is a small urban theatre, a fragment of the city to manipulate and question. It is architecture applied to art-design; Milan compressed into five frames. Here, the boundary between house and city, between inside and outside, dissolves and perhaps it is precisely there that authentic dwelling begins.