Cardia : Future Memory
by Jonathan Robert Maj
research and illustrations for Pidgin 21, Princeton School of Architecture
I just longed for a place where architecture could be experienced directly in all its grandeur … a place where new memories could be built.”
Fintone, Italy.
Found yesterday in an old barn: fragments of what is thought to be one of the last designs of internationally renowned architect Luigi Bazza (1924 – 1995).
The documents were retrieved in a good state of conservation by a young couple who recently purchased a property once owned by art historian and collector Filippo Inventa.
A.M. reports: “We were emptying the cellar when we saw a beautiful copper trunk under a pile of old books. We opened it, and inside we found ten rolled sheets; on them were the names of Bazza and Inventa.
By chance, I recently read Inventa’s latest publication where he talks about an imaginary city of memory, and I recogned I had found drawings of it.”
It is not clear why these illustrations did not make their way into the 1991 text on Cardia in which Inventa describes his unique vision for a new city.
Cardia was conceived as a super-scaled architectural display where dozens of unrealized projects were accurately reconstructed and reassembled in unconventional ways.
From the critic’s own words, in fact, the project was not only meant to satisfy “personal passion and ambition” but also to serve as a testament, a “flesh and bones reminder of the beauty and potential Architecture leaves behind.”
He continues : “ ...I wouldn’t consider myself as a ‘romantic;’ that would be anachronistic.
I just longed for a place where architecture could be experienced directly in all its grandeur … a place where new memories could be built.”