Abitare una casa

A conversation with Nina Bassoli and Andrea Grotto

September 6, 2023

Houses have always been talked about. In furniture magazines, in architectural studies, in research on the subject, in living room talk.
But in the last couple of years, having been forced to spend most of our time inside the home, the focus has shifted to the concept of inhabiting space and the relationships created within it.
The Milan Triennale, for example, has dedicated the exhibition Home Sweet Home, running until Sept. 10, to the theme of the home.
Its curator, Nina Bassoli, focused on the behaviors people have in domestic space. And she thought of home as an intimate and sentimental dimension.
Andrea Grotto, the author of the Casabase exhibition that I am hosting in the gallery until Sept. 15, also imagined the home as a landscape made of memories, emotions, and symbols that transform the home interior into a personal and symbolic geography.

 
The idea of dwelling, of being in a space, of transforming it through one’s existence has always been something that interests not only architects, artists, but each of us.
 
Nina Bassoli quoted Heidegger, “The truck driver is at home on the highway, yet that is not his dwelling; the factory worker is at home in the spinning mill, yet that is not his dwelling; the chief engineer is at home in the power plant, yet he does not live there. All these buildings provide housing for man.” Dwelling as a refuge, as a safe place, has driven man, since the earliest times, to create for himself a place built to his measure, sometimes transforming the existing into something else. For Andrea Grotto, on the other hand, the search for a personal space to share and in which to devote himself to his work.
 
On September 6 at 6:30 p.m. Nina and Andrea were here in the gallery to talk about two different approaches to the theme of living: that of an architect and an artist.
Together they made us think about how many ways there are to conceive and experience the idea of home.
 
On the occasion of the talk with Nina Bassoli and Andrea Grotto, the catalog of Andrea Grotto’s exhibition Casabase was presented.

 

Where: Nashira Gallery, via Vincenzo Monti 21, Milan

Exhibition visiting hours until September 15: Wednesday through Friday from 4 to 7:30 p.m., Saturday by appointment