Newsletter of the College of Architecture at Texas A&M University
In the July/August edition of Abitare, an international interior design, architecture and art magazine, Peter Lang, associate professor of architecture at Texas A&M University, reviewed an exhibit at Rome’s Hunnart Studio featuring recent work by Italian architects Gianfranco Bombaci and Matt Costanzo, of 2A+P/A Architecture in Rome.
The June 4-18 exhibit, “2A+P/A: The Pop Out Show,” was curated by Lang with Patrizia Ferri, an art historian and critic and professor of contemporary art at thre Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice.
Bombaci’s and Costanzo’s “attempt to embrace a psychedelic, surrealist style,” Lang wrote in the Abitare review, “is merely the flip side of the dark and corrupt condition Italian critics have long recognized as representing part of dominant Italian culture."
The architects’ work, he said, celebrates the steamy, subterranean, Fellinesque underworld, not through desperate acts of futility, but via cheerful escapades into the world of "Alice in Wonderland" in a gentle game between fantasy and insanity.
"Any collaborative collective is at risk of imploding at any moment in its professional career, but in the case of 2A+P/A," he said, "they seem to have succeeded in meeting their objectives precisely because they are unafraid of the dangers of working in Italy."
Lang’s principal field of study is postwar Italian contemporary architecture and design history. He has written extensively on the sixties Italian Radical design movement and organized major exhibitions in this field. Active in urban theory, Lang has worked on recent trends in globalization and their impact on the city and in suburban contexts. His other interests include the evolution and documentation of informal architectural and urban productions in Asia, Europe and the United States and most recently the U.S.-Mexican borderlands.
Photos of “2A+P/A: The Pope Out Show” are available online at www.2ap.it/thepopoutshow/.
The July/August edition of Abitare with Lang’s review is available on the 6th floor of the Evans Library Annex, call number NK 1700.a24 no. 504.
- Posted: Oct. 4, 2010 -
Contact: Phillip Rollfing, prollfing@archone.tamu.edu or 979.458.0442.
Peter Lang
