Piazza del Duomo
Jonathan De Pas, Donato D’Urbino, Paolo Lomazzi, con Roberto Sambonet
A DESIGN FOR PIAZZA DEL DUOMO
1984
In a response to an exhibition organised by the Centro San Fedele, three designer-architects and a painter-designer developed a striking and surreal proposal for Piazza del Duomo: bring the statues down from their spires, and place them on their pedestals in the piazza, as if they were pieces in a giant chessboard, so as to make them osservable at a close distance. The plan of the Duomo would be outlined on the pavement of the piazza, the transept aligned with the Galleria, and the statues would be placed in the corresponding positions to their original homes, in order to create a huge open-air museum: the statues converse with the public, creating a dreamlike atmosphere.
A silent army of saints to animate the square even when it is empty.
Insights
«Little of new remains to be invented in architecture; in our time problems have, more than anything, changed in scale. And this change is so extraordinary that we have to avoid at all costs rushing to find solutions that haven’t been previously experimented with. While mankind has need of its legs to walk and its arms to carry things, the scale of his body must be the order of magnitude for architecture».
Rob Krier, from Lo spazio della città, Clup, Milan, 1982