Platinum Winner 2024 – Landscape Art & Sculpture Category – Temple of Thought - Architecture Collection
Platinum Winner of the Houzee Awards 2024

Temple of Thought

Landscape
Landscape Art & Sculpture
Completed / Built
Professional Category

Architect / Designer:

Davide Macullo

Studio:

Davide Macullo Architects SA

Design Team:

Designers: Davide Macullo, Andrea Conti, Jung Kim, Oleksandra Pohorila, Lorenza Tallarini, Aileen Forbes-Munnelly.
Partners: Fondazione RossArte, Municipality of Rossa, ProCalanca, Azienda Forestale Calanca, ProGrigioni Italiano, Share-Architects, e-designfestival, rhnh rhnh.xyz, fondazione Artphilein, Italo Svevo editore, Associazione Artinbosco, Municipality of Capriasca

Copyright:

Corrado Griggi

Country:

Switzerland

The Temple of Thought aspires to be the first place dedicated exclusively to man’s ability to think. It is a place to sit. It is a place to stop even without thinking.
The project envisages the placement of the temple of thought in public spaces around the world in order to emphasise the belonging to the human race of all, indiscriminately, beyond the diversity of cultural, religious, geographic, climatic, political, and economic environments.
We have educated and trained ourselves to produce and consume, and we perpetrate this by necessity at a rapid pace, at the limit of the sustainability of our forces, leaving only residual, meagre spaces for the most important activity of our existence: thinking.
We live in a historical moment of the ripening of a distinctive fruit, born from the seed of a long-established belief in accepting as natural our ability to make abstraction from reality, which we absorb primarily through the sense of sight.
Beyond the ideologies and prejudices associated with a world we have saddled with superfluous content, which we still impose on ourselves, and that restrain our human potential in its ability to decipher and synthesise the complexity of our habitat, resides a freshness of thought freed from impediments we ourselves create and from which, thanks to our sublime capacity for abstraction, is good, beautiful and healthy.
This increasingly prominent capacity is the child of a cultural change that began in the modern or mechanical age, sustained by the emergence of an abstract representation of the world, now assimilated and finally accepted as a fundamental part of our daily lives.
The next, more recent historical phase of conceptual elaboration of abstract reality has brought us to the gates of new realities, those of the virtual world, as a direct consequence of an evolution, which I am sure, will be of the most positive and definitive in the life of man on this planet, in harmony with nature.
This embracing object intends to mark and physically signal the importance of devoting time to the preciousness of human thinking, to make us alert and aware that our quality of life, our survival and choice of priorities to follow in life, are linked to the quality of the thoughts we allow ourselves to elaborate.
In each place, the material used for the construction of this temple-sculpture-seat, will be chosen according to a sustainable and environmentally responsible approach.
It is a project to be realised with artists and architects who are fellow friends of the good way of thinking.

Davide Macullo Architects SA

The ethos of the studio, founded in Lugano (Switzerland) in 2000 by Davide Macullo, is one of ‘drawing from context’. The various contributions promote a dialogue between the specificity of the project and the universality of the contexts. The works have been published and awarded both at home and abroad.
The psychology of space orientation of the studio prioritizes human ecology and a conscious design approach that focuses on the power of space in raising emotions and connecting humans to nature.
The work of the studio includes graphic design, branding consulting and custom designed furniture, and spans to the creation of contemporary art collections for clients. They have also recently produced a customized collection of rugs for the new Chenot Palace Weggis, and a large series of Davide’s drawings (ca. 400nr.) is included in its art collection.

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