Two Italian designers, Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano have shed the standardized practice of building something new, and instead focus their careers on re-building something old. They look out at the world and see it as a vast landscape filled with potential construction materials that have already been made, the fulfillment of the original functions of which has made them useless in the eyes of most people. The duo comprises the co-founders of Lot-Ek, an architectural design studio that has made some serious waves in terms of modern architectural theory and urban design.
There is no denying that most people live in strikingly material-based cultures, but these two innovative thinkers choose to embrace that quality, rather than resenting it, like so many other environmentally conscious individuals. Certain objects may seem banal, ordinary, or limited by their specific function. By doing away with the belief that an object can only serve its intended purpose, Tolla and Lignano have been able to look at the world in a new way. They are perhaps most famous for their near constant use of shipping containers, of which there are millions all around the world.
These large metal structures form the bedrock of international import and export practices in almost every established cultural economy. However, they do not last forever, and once their predetermined period of usefulness is complete, they are largely stored, or discarded and left to collect rust - or to eventually be recycled in some way. Instead of allowing these massive, durable pieces of steel lie unused in forgotten storage yards, Lot-Ek has made them an integral part of their design schemes and have built dozens of structures composed of nothing but reimagined shipping containers.
This is “up-cycling” at its finest: the modern concept of looking at ordinary objects and shifting their function to something else, in order to extend their usability and life span. This tradition has its roots in a number of disciplines and fields of thought, dating back to the Surrealists who used “found objects” in strange juxtapositions as installation art, as well as in the work of Any Warhol, who often used the “pop reclamation” of images and ideas for new purposes. Tolla and Lignano proudly follow in those footsteps, by approaching the banal or uninteresting materials of the world and breathing new life into them through their creativity and vision.
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