Projects
The Oneiric Architect
The prisoner’s greatest resource is his capacity to dream
These projects concern themselves with the possibilities of dream architecture. They are projects I have evolved over several years beginning in my student days and they represent my vision of architecture as I have formulated it. They are conceptions of how the Spirit of Architecture can be invoked. As proposals, they are realizable, but they remain in the realm of ideas, and so exist in a sense as ‘purities’.
As a painter my work is primarily a document about dreams and illusions, and so too are my architectural ideas. They are two dimensional like Piero’s vision of an ideal city and they represent an act of dreaming. The dream of an Italian landscape, the dream of a still life, the dream of a house for a musician, for me they are all dreams, and yet some part of me would like also to make at least part of these dreams real, that is, make an architecture concrete according to my own dreams, although the dream of architecture is still just in its infancy, and its realizable reality often intangible.
My more recent architectural work revolves around purely visionary ideas at a grand scale. Ideas that occupy the realm of discussion and make their appearance primarily as words, and concepts rather then images. I have utilized such communication channels as facebook to begin to disseminate my visions, (and they are visions, mystical and uncontrollable in their origins). I have also founded Progetto Balthazar, a creative but at times elusive think tank that aims primarily at evolving the role of the artist and architect in response to contemporary world issues.
Other Projects
Suitcase Painter, 2007
Suitcase Painter a series of art projects based round the notion of the artist as a transient with only the contents of his suitcase at his disposal. Projects included Inflatable Sculpture, I Can Paint Anything Anywhere, Rock Painter and ALA (Artists’ Liberation Alliance) these projects remain largely at a schematic level at present.
Progetto Balthazar, 2006
Creator of Progetto BALTHAZAR an independent think-tank concerned with contemporary issues as far reaching and including architecture, robotic science, psychotherapy, cooking, painting and telepathy. Initially the project proposed an art & architecture collaborative in the upper Tiber valley (the boundary of Tuscany and Umbria) focusing on the development of the region.
The project has gown to include an internet presence in which such sites as facebook are used to disseminate ideas. the internet is seen as the location for the continual development of the project. The society involved in the think-tank is an anonymous one and includes secret members. Operating between dream and reality, the think-tank now has over three hundred members and exists in twenty-seven countries.
Principal projects include The Floating City a massive proposal for environmental clean up in the Pacific Ocean which includes the construction of a visionary maritime city made-up of plastic debris. The city would be a completely independent nation subject to its own government, and would welcome immigration of all kinds (boat people). The scale of this project requires a huge investment of effort but is ecologically and politically necessary. It calls for the ingenuity of the science and art community.
Other projects include Bicicletta ( a model city in New Mexico where there are only bicycles and alternative energy systems) Art-gift; incorporating the notion that societies can give art projects to each other rather then bombs (the statue of liberty vs. the A-bomb!) and The Great Collaborative, a think-tank issue devoted to the rebirth of crafts and arts in the world economic system.