Last year marked 100 years since pioneering modernist Le Corbusier unveiled Maison Dom-Ino, his radical vision for open-plan housing built solely from columns, slabs, and a staircase. As it turns out, the design not only guided Le Corb's later work but also spurred a legion of similarly skeletal concrete structures all over Italy. To uncover the extent of Dom-Ino's influence on the Italian landscape, Genoa-based design collective Space Caviar traversed the country, documenting 99 Dom-Ino-inspired structures by local architects. The project, highlighted in a new piece on Wired, culminated in 99 exquisite mini-documentaries.
According to Space Caviar's Joseph Grima, who is also co-director of the upcoming Chicago Architecture Biennial and the architect behind the RAM house at this year's Milan Design Week, these barebones structures are simultaneously considered eyesores and essential stages for the "theater of everyday life." Wired has the full story.
99 Dom-Inos was commissioned and first exhibited by last summer's La Biennale di Venezia and will be on view at the Munich Film Museum later this month. Below, check out a few of the structures shot by Space Caviar, followed by a trailer (in English) and a 6-minute clip of the documentary (in Italian).
· The Radical Le Corbusier Design That Shaped Italy [Wired]
· 13 Little-Known Facts about Le Corbusier's Life, Loves, and Modernist Designs [Curbed National]
· Architectural Roadtripper to Spend a Year Hopping Between 30 Le Corbusier Homes [Curbed National]