Assemblage as a figurative text for architecture. A dialogue between UFO and False Mirror Office

Abstract

Over the last decade, the generation of emerging architects has been questioning architectural representation, by reacting to the wave of photorealistic rendering with a kind of figuration based on the exploitation of compositional procedures originating in fine arts, such as collage, montage and assemblage. Among these architects, False Mirror Office attempts to employ assemblage as a creative process for architectural design, where youthful obsessions, quotes from the masters, legacies of our contemporary popular culture and forms of invention collide together without hiding their nature and origin. False Mirror Office examines the genealogy of assemblage in architecture through the rediscovery of one of its most accomplished declinations: the experiments carried out between 1968 and the early 1970s by the UFO Group, a group of Florentine architects featuring Carlo Bachi, Lapo Binazzi, Patrizia Cammeo, Riccardo Foresi and Vittorio Maschietto. Through drawings, archival documents and interviews with members of UFO, False Mirror Office analyses UFO’s assemblages, outlines their origins and retraces their evolution, from the Urboeffimeri series to the Bamba Issa disco set up. The rediscovery of UFO assemblages is also an opportunity to establish a dialogue with some projects of False Mirror Office, in order to reaffirm the relevance of assemblage as a design tool for contemporary architecture.