Seeing the architect Michele De Lucchi's wooden houses reminds me of an alpine walk passing old and shaky wooden structures occupied by the odd cow and some bits of wooden farm equipment. In the real world, it's only at that altitude that things are allowed to get so out of hand. Lower down, such imperfection wouldn't be tolerated for long.
It must have taken many hours to make some of these houses, in particular the ones with stacked-up wood that exhibit all the crazy precision of a dry stone wall. There is something absurd about them — a combination of the intricate detail, the roughness of the material, and their uselessness — which earns them the perfect project title, "Walls and Heroic Structures." Even though some of them are not described as heroic, they all seem so to me, and, like the Swiss art duo Fischli & Weiss's miniature rubber sculptures of everyday scenes, they are a wonderfully ridiculous celebration of the heroism of human existence.
De Lucchi's houses are an escape from a world stuffed with perfection, a reminder of something human in the man-made environment. Awhile ago, I read a quote by International Style pioneer Eileen Gray that went something like, "Too much hygiene can kill you." Written some 80 years ago, it sounds today like a warning on a pack of cigarettes gone wrong. I have the impression that De Lucchi has similar concerns. These houses are more than a hobby; they are a reminder of lost values, misplaced priorities, and a profession that has all but abandoned its primary role.
Like many Italian architects, De Lucchi is also a designer — maybe more of a designer than an architect, though in Italy the two callings are not separated as they are elsewhere. L'Architetto Michele De Lucchi — a prominent figure in the eighties Memphis group who recently completed an overhaul of Milan's Triennale Design Museum — has offices in Milan and Rome, with surprisingly corporate clients.
So why does De Lucchi make these wooden houses? He asks himself the same question, and inadvertently answers it, too: "I am still wondering why I do these wood houses and why they look nice, so small and twisted, whereas they would be so different built on a real scale, all straight and perfect, with their gutters and sealed windows, their shutters and balconies and switches to turn on the lights."
They are a protest against the rules and regulations that are supposed to keep us safe but mostly just mess up the atmosphere. They are also as Italian as an Italo Calvino short story; in fact, they are the exact architectural equivalent — imaginary dwellings to fuel our dreams of escape from the sterile controls down below.
