Lecture by Beniamino Servino and Luca Galofaro

Conversations with Beniamino Servino and Luca Galofaro
Conversations with Beniamino Servino and Luca Galofaro

On the evening of February 16, we were fortunate enough to have Beniamino Servino and Luca Galofaro come to the Palazzo for a “conversation”. This lecture was unique because for the first time I truly felt a connection to Italy while sitting in the Palazzo lecture hall. Perhaps fitting for the theme of the lecture, the following is my own “translation” of their most important ideas.

Servino immediately begins his lecture speaking in Italian, and explaining, through a translator, why he prefers to lecture in the same language through which he makes his architecture. The intersection between language, thought, and architecture is rarely spoken of but nonetheless defines how we communicate our intentions.

The word translation is in fact a central theme of the lecture. Architecture is always a form of translation, whether it is a translation of an idea, an object, or a place. This translation through architecture expresses love for whatever is being translated. He goes on to discuss the ways in which everything can be understood as a form of translation. Even the act of reading is an act of translation as one interprets words on a page and is influenced by their own personal experiences and views. A quote from the lecture appropriately summarizes the feelings evoked by its theoretical content, that “Thoughts become complex when you have the words to describe them. Otherwise they are plain thoughts”. Many of the ideas presented in this lecture are clearly more difficult to describe in words than they are to understand in one’s head. Servino does not take the generic architectural lecture approach of displaying images of projects and describing their process in detail. Rather, his images form a background to a more complex narrative about the foundations of thought, form, memory, and their relationship to architecture.

By stating “I am not a creator, I detest the idea of creativity”, Servino begins to delve into the implications of created works. In a sense, he asserts that nothing is in fact created or original and that everything is merely a reinterpretation of something that came before. This idea is reinforced by the role of memory in many of Beniamino’s works, and his belief that memory is not simply an archive but an elaboration on what is experienced. Here again the idea of translation comes to mind because memory itself is in fact a translation of reality.

Beniamino’s work correlates perfectly with our current architecture studio project, as we are exploring methods of representation in collage and montage. By taking an image of an existing building, for example, he forms a canvas for subsequent operations. Thus, his work directly embodies his belief that architecture is produced through translation rather than so called “creativity”. To him, drawing is not a method of representation, but a tool to “build architecture” because drawings communicate architectural narratives.

Beniamino Servino and Luca Galofaro
Beniamino Servino and Luca Galofaro

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