By Simone Bandini
“It is Maya, the deceiving veil, which envelops the eyes of mortals and makes them see a world of which it cannot be said either to exist or not to exist; because it resembles sleep, it resembles the reflection of the sun on the sand, which the pilgrim from afar mistakes for water”
Arthur Schopenhauer, “The World as Will and Representation” (1819)
Technology can be an insidious veil of Maya – capable of altering the perception of reality, even in the world of planning and design.
Theirs is, on the other hand, an intuitive design system: the full-scale reproduction of the rooms allows an immediate, impactful and clarifying view for those who want to furnish their home or commercial spaces. Surveyors Alessio Uliveti and Andrea Conti talk to us about their study and the advantages of their method.
“We confronted each other and found each other immediately, instinctively,” they tell us. Since the first embryonic idea (2022) they have wasted no time. So the following year they set up rooms with modular modules in a new building, life-size, with a decisive empirical effect: “You can make each other understand what you have in mind and, especially, you quickly understand what you want to achieve”, they tell us.
The idea concretely meets the space: “Distances are appreciated, the client acts directly, in an interactive way; There is a fertile competition of ideas with the technician within this dynamic ‘theatre’: a real scenography where the customization, the soul of the project, is formed and brought to completion”.
It is a real experience of intuitive ‘drawing’, a ‘game’ that develops spontaneously and that lays solid foundations for the work to come: “As if it were a cohabitation before marriage!”, they joke.
Alessio and Andrea tell us that they have had to deal with chronic undecided people who, through this method, have clarified themselves in a short time, becoming quite determined in their aspirations: “It is a moke-up to interpret tastes and prevent the critical issues hidden on paper that can occur, bringing high-level design into everyday life and making it easily usable”.
We are therefore talking about tangible, physical spaces, not virtual representations, which reveal the minimal essence of the environments, lifting the veil of Maya of appearances and the multiple solutions opened up by modern technology – does not seem fully achievable: “Being really present, in the project, has a value that is not virtual but substantial. This is what can be expected from our study,” they specify.
For both of them, design is a young love, a vocation: “Even at an early age I felt like a call to enter people’s homes: already from the outside, through the windows, I could imagine how the interior spaces could be organized,” Alessio tells us; while Andrea tells us how for him: “The profession of the surveyor, the ‘conventional’ dimension has always been narrow for him and how the intention was to ‘get out of the box’, even in a daring and revolutionary way”.
The two have been friends for a long time and share an important passion for speleology, with interesting effects of a systemic nature also on their thinking. Let’s see how.
“We started with the Chiocchio Abyss in Spoleto, like many others. A vertical cave of considerable impact whose interior setting invites you to a feeling of humility and respect, as well as wonder – you are so small in front of monumental interior volumes. This is how fears emerge – but they can be challenged – and overcome one’s limits (not only of will, but also of thought, ed.)”, they explain.
“The karst system has a constant temperature, the same principle as geothermal!” The domestic environment itself should maintain a constant thermoregulation value – an optimum that, for example, can be approached by design measures such as the design of the North side of the basement house, therefore naturally isolated from the ground, and placing all the main windows to the South,” they add.
We are fascinated by their statements, marked by a spontaneous charisma: “In the cave you enjoy a certain tranquillity, you are fascinated by beauty and everything returns perfectly spontaneous in a sort of zeroing of time and the outside world. The circadian rhythm slows down”.
“We are proud to be part of the Cai Speleological Group of Foligno and we actively collaborate in the updating of caves through ad hoc surveys: distancing, 3D scanning, mapping”.
We are really intrigued by this latest activity of theirs, which concerns the ‘underground land registry’, of which we were even unaware of the existence.
Info: Via G. Saragat 12a, Spoleto (Pg) / tel. 347 4860922 (Alessio) / 377 3260769 (Andrea) / email: info@planit.studio