In Our Present Condition…
May 1–July 15
Originally from Peru, Giacomo Castagnola lived and worked for many years in the Tijuana-San Diego border region, where he established Estudio Germen, an architecture and design studio investigating the self-organizing, “informal” city. Currently working between Mexico City and San Francisco, much of Castagnola’s work explores the in-betweens and overlaps of document, body, furniture, and architecture in an attempt to create different structures and systems of exhibition to make galleries and museums function more like public spaces.
His evolving family of designs and furniture pieces begin with objects that react to interaction with the body of the user; followed by loitering street benches that intervene into left-over areas in public space; to body-containers made by the repeated accretion of a single unit of the same material; and finally to interconnected tables that develop into art exhibition display platforms. By accumulation and expansion, his designs aim to transforms space and to extend the body.