MINIATURA + OfficeUS
Biennale di Venezia, 2014
An invitation by Matteo Ghidoni

Handmade book with stamps, dry decal and black ink on paper. The pages were hand sewn (50 x 30 cm)



MINIATURA was a collaborative project between Bruna Canepa and Ciro Miguel from 2011 to 2015.

One of our contributions as a selected outpost to OfficeUS at Biennale di Venezia. Reprogramming the US pavilion. How could spatial actions change the meaning of a building? 
Our test laboratory is the US Pavilion itself.
Specific architectural additions or interventions are qualified by short descriptions.

Pics by Pedro Kok

MINIATURA: Cidade Gráfica
Curated by Elaine Ramos, Celso Longo and Daniel Trench
Itaú Cultural
São Paulo, Brasil
2014

MINIATURA was a collaborative project between Bruna Canepa and Ciro Miguel from 2011 to 2015.

APARTAMENTO DE 1KM

The rooms are like buildings, the apartment is the city: a domesticated city. 

O apartamento de 1 km é uma casa-faixa com dimensões que extrapolam a experiência de um lar típico. Não é só a escala urbana que está inserida dentro do apartamento, mas também seus próprios itens: outdoors, casas, jardins, neons, animais, paisagens, relevos, carro, cinema, ponte, ruínas. 

Os cômodos (alguns deles móveis) estão dispersos ao longo do apartamento, que é marcado por listras a cada 100 metros, indicando quanto já se percorreu mas também pontuando específicos eventos. É possível se locomover de carro, como numa cidade, ou simplesmente andando as longas distâncias entre os cômodos da casa. As distâncias e situações são levadas ao extremo. 

No final do quilómetro, uma pequena porta se abre e conecta o apartamento a um foguete, quase um arranha-céu prestes a decolar rumo ao infinito espaço. Como se o único alívio do mundo construído fosse embarcar numa viagem à Lua. 

CASA CIDADE 

Quem olha a casa Cidade pela janela de um avião não entende ao certo se é uma casa ou uma cidade. 

Os cômodos estão dispersos ao longo de sua área, como pequenas ilhas num oceano, conectados pela malha da cidade. 

A cidade não está dentro da casa, a casa é a cidade. 

O corredor é a avenida, o quarto é uma casa, o chuveiro é o lago, a dispensa é uma longelinea horta, a janela é um mirante, e o exercício é uma escalada na montanha (que aqui, é o cume de um arranha-céu). 

Uma escala monumental para as atividades banais de uma só pessoa. 

CASA FLUXO

Trens, pessoas, carros, bicicletas, navios, aviões. São os fluxos da 

cidade que definem o volume da casa. Um volume que, incapaz de interromper todos esses fortes vetores, os incorporou. 

Um sistema de mobilidade de uma cidade inteira atravessa a casa, como parte integrante do seu funcionamento interno – suas entranhas. O fluxo não para e portanto são os caminhos da cidade que deformam os volumes dos espaços privados, como uma rocha esculpida ao longo do tempo. 

A casa apresenta um paradoxo: um sólido estacionado porém dinâmico. 

Submetida ao movimento urbano, seus espaços estão condenados à mudança permanente. 

SUPER COLINA
Galeria LOGO
Curated by Carlos Issa
São Paulo, Brasil
2014

MINIATURA: From the Earth to the Moon
Imaginary Architecture and Landscapes on Paper                          
Studio Stefania Miscetti
Curated by Emilia Giorgi e Simona Galateo
Rome, Italy
2014

MINIATURA was a collaborative project between Bruna Canepa and Ciro Miguel from 2011 to 2015.

“Yes, gentlemen,” continued the orator, “in spite of the opinions of certain narrow-minded people, who would shut up the human race upon this globe, as within some magic circle which it must never outstep, we shall one day travel to the moon, the planets, and the stars, with the same facility, rapidity, and certainty as we now make the voyage from Liverpool to New York! Distance is but a relative expression, and must end by being reduced to zero.”  Jules Verne, From the Earth to the Moon, 1865

STUDIO STEFANIA MISCETTI is pleased to introduce the From the Earth to the Moon. Imaginary Architecture and Landscapes on Paper (Dalla Terra alla Luna. Architetture e paesaggi immaginari su carta) exhibition curated by Simona Galateo and Emilia Giorgi which has brought together some of the most fascinating studies of Italian and international architecture: Italy’s 2A+P/A and Fabio Alessandro Fusco; France’s Map Office from Hong Kong; Germany’s Raumlabor from Berlin and Miniatura, a group of very young Brazilian artists from Sao Paolo, in Italy for the first time.

The visionary nature of the book From the Earth to the Moon prompted an invitation to reflect upon the issue of creating images as a tool for the prefiguration of new and possible architectural and urban scenarios. Every studio was requested to present no more than one project – some of which were created specifically for the occasion – illustrated with one or more drawings and accompanied by a brief account as an extra research tool to further enhance the narrative quality of the exhibition.

The curators clarify: “The exhibition tells of the power of intellectual procedures and the visions they yield through works on paper. Drawing in architecture – which is currently experiencing a new creative season – allows us to explore the visual territory as a critical tool for intellectual reflection and planning research for a better understanding of the world; to amplify and modify our views while overcoming limits and preconceptions. No longer a simple means of communication, drawing is now proving the need to experiment, well beyond the limitations dictated by technical demands or purchasers”.

The exhibition’s title From the Earth to the Moon also suggests the infinity of possible settings for projects – under water, on earth and on the moon – thanks to which we will participate in the construction of imaginary architecture and landscapes as well as contemporary metropolises, capable of interpreting a pluralistic and complex metropolitan reality in all of its constantly evolving aspects. A free study conducted alongside the planning stages of this profession during which architects and designers have always exchanged ideas. And often with astonishing results.

CUORE
Drawn in Santa Margherita Ligure, Italia.
Printed by Meli-Melo Press in São Paulo, Brasil.
2015

A book about love <3

MINIATURA: The Supreme Achievement
Curated by Maria S. Giudici and Davide Sacconi
CAMPO
Rome, Italy
2015      

MINIATURA was a collaborative project between Bruna Canepa and Ciro Miguel from 2011 to 2015.



Feauturing the work of: Alex Maymind, Amid.Cero9, Aristide Antonas, Behemoth, Dogma, Didier Fiuza, Faustino, FORA + Beth Hughes, Map Office, Microcities, Miniatura, Philippe Morel, Raumlabor.

“The Supreme Achievement”, an exhibition born out of the collaboration between the London publisher Black Square Press and the space for architecture CAMPO, will open in Rome on Saturday the 12th of September 2015.

The curators Maria S. Giudici and Davide Sacconi invited 12 international architecture offices to formulate their position on the contemporary city through the elaboration of a narrative text and an evocative image. The contributions have become the briefs for a workshops in which students from several European Universities have been called to build 12 plaster models as devices that from the domestic scale could trigger the urban visions.

The idea of the exhibition and the workshop, together with a publication that will collect the results, originates from the project “The twelve ideal cities” published by Superstudio in 1971. Perfect and dystopian urban mechanisms where any incoherence is eliminated, they challenge the idea that space and bodily presence might not matter anymore in the future, while at the same time they provide an ironic commentary on the architect’s curse; architects have to be projective and optimistic by default, even or maybe especially when civilization seems in fact to have come to an end.

The Superstudio piece was less about imagining the Future than it was about re-imagining Architecture as a form of knowledge and as a platform for thinking rather than mere practice. The format itself – one image and one text for each of the twelve cities –implied a project of an Archetype rather than a pragmatic solution to a problem. In fact, these visions of ‘supreme achievement’ are not answers, but open questions. Sharing this approach the project “The Supreme Achievement” elaborates a reflection and opens a debate on the possible role of Architecture in putting forward ideas for new forms of life and new possibilities for our political imagination beyond the current conventional models. The exhibition and the workshop are the first act of CAMPO, a space to debate, study and celebrate architecture, born in Rome out of the collaboration between Gianfranco Bombaci, Matteo Costanzo, Luca Galofaro e Davide Sacconi. CAMPO invites researchers, professionals and students to expose projects, experiments and researches that challenge the current understanding of the city, and to collaborate in the investigation of the potential and the limits of architecture as a form of collective production and common knowledge.

TROMPE L’OEIL
Book edited by Camilo Otero and Andrea Triana, printed by Calipso Press
Cali, Colombia
2017

TROMPE L’OEIL
Curated by Andrea Triana and Maria Paola Sanchez
NADA
Bogota, Colombia
2017



Exhibition text by Giovanni Vargas

“Al observar por vez primera los dibujos sintéticos y coloridos de Bruna Canepa, imágenes como las de Chris Ware y el grupo de arquitectos de los años setenta SITE vienen de inmediato a la memoria. El primero por los trazos limpios y por su interés en tratar asuntos como el interior y el exterior en los espacios, para exponer las vidas cruzadas de los personajes en sus narraciones gráficas; el segundo porque sus propuestas arqui-espaciales poseían una postura traviesa e inquieta al intentar descomponer la forma tradicional de construir los edificios y de percibir los espacios.

Como bien lo propone Canepa, sus dibujos se nos presentan como situaciones o proposiciones que intentan cuestionar el orden establecido y coherente de la realidad y es este planteamiento el que aproxima mis referencias con el trabajo de la artista. Los tres desean crear con sus imágenes ciertas condiciones que enrarezcan, alteren y cuestionen aquellos órdenes.

Propuestas de dibujos a manera de maquetas, en los que el interior es el exterior y viceversa, es el juego que permite igualmente recordar aquellos sets de televisión o del cine en los que fácilmente los actores pasan de un espacio a otro, de un estado a otro, en el intento de dar cuenta del desarrollo coherente de una historia.

La ilusión creada por aquellos espacios apenas sostenidos por estructuras con delgadas divisiones: láminas, paneles, fachadas, frontispicios, entre otros, revela aspectos de la realidad que de otra manera están ocultos. Se recrea, se ficciona y se distorsiona el espacio para que estas percepciones emerjan. Juegos como el de un delante y un detrás, el seccionar, fragmentar y desplazar, traen a reflexión el proyecto de Dan Graham sobre la alteración de una casa suburbana de 1978 donde los transeúntes son expuestos, incorporados al interior como una parte de la decoración y en donde los espacios más priva- dos se sustituyen por el más público. Todo está al desnudo, todo está muy claro y expuesto, pero cabría preguntarse si ante tanta transparencia existen realidades o informaciones encubiertas o disimuladas que resultan mejor protegidas al estar expuestas ante los ojos de los demás.

¿Qué es lo que exponen aquellos dibujos de Canepa?, tal vez la respuesta sea la misma que dio el ministerio de asuntos exteriores a Mies van der Rohe cuando se le encargó la construcción del pabellón alemán en Barcelona “No se expondrá nada, el mismo pabellón será la exposición”. Así que estos dibujos son la exposición sobre la exposición, todo lo que expone es una cierta manera de mirar, de concebir y de tratar el espacio. Las líneas son líneas que dividen y construyen, el color crea fachadas y planos y las palabras o indicios textuales son cargas de humor que disimulan la seriedad cuestionadora del tratamiento espacial.
Toda imagen se construye a partir de referencias conscientes e inconscientes, conocidas y desconocidas, el primer trazo en un dibujo soporta el peso de una historia y cuando observo los dibujos de la artista brasilera, se me presentan con claridad un linaje de referencias tanto arquitectónicas como artísticas que se han preocupado por la manera en que el espacio es percibido y construido, pero también veo la soledad, la frialdad, la racionalidad con la que la arquitectura lo ha asumido y tratado.

¿Han visto por ahí al ser humano en estos dibujos?”

MINIATURA: 30 architectes
A project conceived by Manon Gaillet and Sylvain Bérard
Pavillon de L’Arsenal
Paris, France 
2017

MINIATURA was a collaborative project between Bruna Canepa and Ciro Miguel from 2011 to 2015.



30 architects presents the approach of international architecture firms, be they emerging, established or historical figures of the discipline, through an original element of design or theoretical research. The sensitive and evolving selection, collated by Marion Bernard Architectes, forms an imaginary museum of the discipline and its practices.

The exhibition includes videos, scale models, installations, original drawings, prototypes and books by:
51N4E / architecten de vylder vinck taillieu / Assemble / Atelier Bow-Wow / BEALS LYON / BeL / Bruther / fala atelier / Adam Nathaniel Furman / Fabio Alessandro Fusco / Grau / Herman Hertzberger / Studio Anne Holtrop / junya.ishigami+associates / Natalie Kwee / Miniatura / Monadnock / MOS / NP2F / OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen & Bas Princen / OFFICE U67 / Valerio Olgiati / onishimaki + hyakudayuki / Point Supreme / Thomas Raynaud / Salottobuono / Ettore Sottsass / Ippei Takahashi / Aldo van Eyck / vGHcompany

30 architects questions the approach more than the constructed building, explores causes more than consequences, examines the path taken more than the destination. Each architecture firm exhibited extricates itself from the constructed vocabulary so that its architectural practice is visible.

30 architects abandons measurements to share architectural issues through autonomous elements and theoretical objects belonging to the conception process or to the critical exercise: books, videos, drawings, scale models, installations, poems, templates.

30 architects asserts the force of styles, capable of maintaining, without exterior ties, forms sufficiently powerful so as to make constraints and contingencies disappear, and where only architecture remains.

30 architects is an open and spontaneous programme that brings together and unites a sensitive and evolving selection of emerging practices, established studios and historical figures.

30 architects depicts a renewed and subjective perspective of a diversity of contemporary practices that enhance experimentation and research, and which give priority to feeling as a tool of creation.

30 architects questions the manner the discipline is presented, creating an imaginary museum so that complex worlds and numerous techniques may be easily grasped, and forges a new grammar where nothing is construction but everything is architecture.

30 architects is a mobile project conceived by the architects Manon Gaillet and Sylvain Bérard.