movable exhibition displays animate supervoid’s aluminum library pavilion

Supervoid designs a room within a room for Premio Strega

The exhibition Uno, Cinque, Dodici. Ottant’anni del Premio Strega by Supervoid brings into view the different layers of interpretation that the long history of the literary prize offers to visitors, presenting an ‘ideal library’ made up of more than one thousand volumes selected from 1947 to the present day. Organized in chronological sequence, it recounts, in parallel, the events, protagonists, controversies, and media narratives that have accompanied the seventy-nine editions held so far. The exhibition design is conceived around a single object, placed at the center of the room. This pavilion is imagined as a room within a room: an autonomous architecture and, at the same time, an exhibition device capable of staging the different environments that have accompanied the history of the Prize. The interiors evoke an intimate and domestic dimension, made up of rooms, textile surfaces, and colors that recall the settings associated with the birth of the Prize and the community that animated it. The exterior, by contrast, appears as an abstract and essential shell, designed to display the books in a contemporary art museum.

all images by Louis De Belle

Interactive windows animate the aluminum exhibition pavilion

The essentiality of the shell is nevertheless animated by a series of elements that articulate the surfaces of the pavilion: the windows opening inwards, the shortlisted books and the sequence of winners. These elements give rhythm to the architecture through an almost classical articulation, despite its essential materiality. The covers of the winning books, with their different formats and designs, emerge from the aluminum planes, introducing a visual vibration into the ordered whole. The balance between abstraction, rarefied materiality and archival objects helps to convey the various dimensions of the Premio Strega: its spaces as at once private, public and institutional. Finally, the visitor’s experience of the exhibition, curated by Studio Supervoid, is based on the interaction between display and public. Visitors approach the pavilion and, through the gesture of opening the windows inwards, activate the device, which responds to their action by assuming ever-changing configurations.

exhibition pavilion designed for Uno, Cinque, Dodici. Ottant’anni del Premio Strega

Supervoid creates an ‘ideal library’ of more than one thousand volumes

chronological display tracing the history of Premio Strega since 1947

windows integrated into the pavilion’s facades as interactive elements

pavilion conceived as a room within a room

books integrated directly into the pavilion’s architectural skin

architectural surfaces animated through openings and displayed volumes

ordered material composition interrupted by graphic book covers

exhibition design balancing archival material and spatial installation

Supervoid combines display design, archive, and architecture within one structure

textile surfaces and muted colors referencing historic literary settings

project info:

name: Uno, cinque, dodici. Ottant’anni del Premio Strega
designer: Supervoid | @supervoid.eu

collaborator: Davide Rapezzi, Giovanni Telve, Giovanni Fabbri
graphic design: Caneva-Nishimoto
conceived and produced by: Fondazione Bellonci e Strega
supported by: Assessorato alla Cultura di Roma Capitale e Azienda Speciale Palaexpo
partner: BPER Banca
sponsor: Persol e Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana
technical sponsor: Eurofinestra
photographer: Louis De Belle | @louisdebelle

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edited by: christina vergopoulou | designboom