Sorimasa is a baldachin: an octagonal structure that combines the transience of a field tent with the softness of a Baroque baldachin. Rising from eight vertical supports, the structure expands into a creamy dome made of coloured cement, shaped with a pastry bag. It is the work I created for the exhibition Pittura Italiana Oggi, curated by Damiano Gullì at the Triennale Milano.
The architecture maintains the tension between open and enclosed space through the openings that transform it, at once, into a place of passage and a place of shelter. It is a suspended architecture, a concrete portal, an idea of the East seen from afar.
“Sorimasa” is an invented word that I once overheard on the street in Ancona. It is an expression of wonder and disorientation at the same time, carrying within it the physical passage from one state to another, condensed into a brief moment. A momentary passage, a small death.
