City DNA Installation presented in Milan

The annual INTERNI magazine exhibition of art installations started in the framework of Design Week in Milan. Architects Sergey Kuznetsov, Sergey Tchoban and Agniya Sterligova presented City DNA installation there.

This year INTERNI magazine exhibition is titled IMMATERIAL MATERIAL. The art object, created by Russian architects Sergey Kuznetsov, Sergey Tchoban and Agniya Sterligova, is an installation which consists of media screens and mirrors.

The installation is located in the small courtyard of Statale University. The chambered space in the heart of the Ca’ Granda complex of Renaissance buildings has become an important baseline for the designers—an elegant arcade that ornaments the yard along its perimeter embodies Materiality. The media screens and mirrors create an illusion that proportions and look of the yard are changing beyond recognition.

The media and mirror surfaces are set in the center of the yard at an angle of 90 degrees to each other, dividing the space into 4 sectors; each section exhibits its local transformation of material into immaterial. The installation’s main theme is the image of a modern metropolis: the media screens broadcast pictures of different cities, and the scale is constantly changing (micro-patterns of separate windows and roof fragments alternate with grandiose panoramas), and sharp illustrations are replaced with blurry images. In the split second detailed fragment of a city turns into a blurry picture—seemingly abstract, but nevertheless still conveying its individual features.

Through this transition from sharpness to soft-focus, which implies a thin line between materiality and immateriality, architects designate that very DNA molecule, in which the identity of each city, each quarter, and each individual building is encrypted.

City DNA 

The project designers: Sergey Tchoban, Sergey Kuznetsov, Agniya Sterligova

Project installation: VELKO