(Italy, 1960)
Founder of SERVéN in 1994, the Italian architect Beniamino Servino studied monumentality in architecture in the context of a “post-ecological” city. The drawings he does on paper, newspaper or pages of books are sketches of utopian projects looking to renew the urban and rural landscape that he finds to be desolate. Inspired by existing photographs, the architect begins with a collage of visual and typographical elements. The sheets draw from a repertoire of towers simultaneously evoking both, medieval urbanism, and modernist architecture. Visual elements on signs mark the authority of the city (Castles, cathedrals or steeples), symbols of human ambition (the tower of Babel) and modern infrastructure (water towers, telecommunications antennas), all of the opening the imagination. Progressively dematerialized by colors and transparent nuances, the structures reveal the texts that constitute them, intermingling epochs in the manner of a palimpsest.
