From January 31 to March 15, 2025, Aperture, a group exhibition at the Fondazione Pastificio Cerere, Rome, will be open, curated by the CAMPO curatorial collective.
Aperture reflects on openness as a constitutive gesture of architecture. According to the curators, “if to build is to separate, to enclose, to shape the boundary between an interior and an exterior, to open is to reveal the threshold between distinct worlds, to connect what has been separated and therefore to challenge established orders.”
To celebrate its 10th year of activity, CAMPO invited architects, artists, photographers and curators to reflect on the idea of openness as an aesthetic, technical and conceptual device. Vazio S/A participates with “Skyscraper of Air”, a proposal for Mumbai, India.
Air Skyscraper
The dream of Indian architect Charles Correa (1930-2015) and his Development Plan for Mumbai’s factories has turned into a nightmare: all the empty spaces of Mumbai’s old industries will become condominiums and shopping centers. This project is betting on another verticality: a microclimate that will cool the factories with atmospheric architecture. A vapor building. A cloud that hovers forever over the ruins of Parel.
Installed within the factory voids, the skyscraper will regulate the climate towards less hot and less polluted spaces. A landscaping of religious fig trees creates shadows and defines voids generated by the monumentality of these trees. They emit the gas we breathe and act as a manifesto of the possibility of life. The second element is the hundreds of high-pressure nebulizers that emit mist and lower the ambient temperature. A system of sensors reads the outside temperature and relative humidity, adjusting them according to atmospheric variations. Artificial currents, invisible thermal barriers and radiation will reduce the temperature to 21°C; all creating a conditioned interior the size of a park.
Depending on the day or holiday, the fog can have chromatic nuances. On Independence Day, saffron color. On Ganesh Chaturthi Day, orange and yellow. On Arbor Day, green. On Holi, all colors.
Seen from afar, our skyscraper will only be perceptible through its mist and the tops of its trees. The edges of the invisible building will be as discreet as Buckminster Fuller ‘s dome over Manhattan. Light, tall, weightless. Instead of shopping malls, a cool, misty emptiness. Instead of architectural substance, a parallelepiped of air and humidity. Like a manifesto for Parel’s last voids, eternally protected by borders and fresh air currents.
And full of anti-construction. A reserve where everyone can do what they want: free areas for leisure, for cricket, for Sundays and Mondays. A maidan occupied exclusively by fog and majestically monumental fig trees. And, of course, used by Mumbaikars thirsty for free areas.
Skyscraper 1
Location: former India United Mills 2 and 3
Address: Tanaji Malusare Rd. / Tukaram Bhikaji Kadam Marg / GD Ambekar Marg
Skyscraper 2
Location: former Apollo Mills
Address: Minerva Rd. / Lodha Rd.
Skyscraper 3
Location: former India United Mills 1
Address: Palav Marg/ Lalbaug Flyover