DCA Milano has designed a temporary installation in the Cortile d’Onore of the Palazzo Brera for the Milan design week. It is included in the White in the City exhibition curated by Giulio Cappellini, part of the Fuorisalone. Entitled Walking through Whiteness, the installation fuses the essential qualities of white – its nature, science and symbolism – into a single experience.
A white cube enclosing a room, the work is a space in which the qualities of white as the achromatic colour of maximum lightness and clarity can be explored.
Externally, it measures as a perfect 2.5m cube composed of white chalk beams. These beams, the first of three components that form the installation, are cut by Laboratorio Morseletto and slot together forming the horizontal courses of the structure.
Internally, the surfaces merge to create a space of whiteness in three dimensions, dissolving any sense of materiality. Covering the floor is the second white component: salt. This crystalline mineral element, an enduring symbol of life and purification, accumulates from the square perimeter of the room into a round central mound like a naturally occurring salt cone.
The third white component is a 5000-degree Kelvin beam of LED-light piercing through an aperture in the ceiling. Made by Viabizzuno, it is one of the whitest lights in existence and illuminates the salt crystal cone which reflects white light onto surrounding surfaces to generate an interplay of white references: concentrated/unsaturated, light/shade, smooth/rough, matte/bright – contributing to the sense of metaphysical space.
Image © Paola Pansini