Ca’ Bianca (The White House). A mysterious place, lost in the woods of the Turin hill. An enchanted castle, packed with memories, works, materials, objects, books, images. Your hosts? She is Laura Castagno, and he is Leonardo Mosso. A couple that in more than fifty years has masterfully crossed the territories of art and the most sophisticated international architecture.
The house seen as a phantasmagorical and unimaginable archive: you’re welcome!
Intro
The house of Laura Castagno and Leonardo Mosso by Maurizio Cilli and Stefano Mirti
The first research of Archivi d’Affetto focuses on the special home and work of a very close couple both in life and in the development of the poetics of their work. A close intellectual bond, of productions of projects, research, and thoughts which were courageous due to excess of generosity, and generous due to excess of courage. Existences that have sustained the course of history with their own load of will, of quality, of works, often isolated in the tenacious invisibility of trenches imposed by the world or by the mind. She is an architect, visual artist and scholar, he was an architect, designer, teacher, historian, photographer and artist who recently passed away.
During the eighties, they founded the MAAAD, Museum of Architecture, Applied Arts and Design, in their large house-atelier. An enchanted place in the woods of the Turin hill, where, throughout their lives, they have gathered and collected an extraordinary number of documents, books, works, drawings, photographs, and objects. A wonderful accumulation of precious evidence that escapes an apparent possible classification. An intricate landscape of continuous stratifications that trace innumerable, possible, cultural relationships between the arts of the twentieth century. A complex network of different languages from philosophy to literature, from visual arts to architecture, from graphics to applied arts.
Who

Laura and Leonardo
She is an architect, artist, and designer. From the beginning, her artistic activity has been characterized by a particular attention to the spatial context with conceptual inspiration, and has manifested itself through installations and migrations of signs in space. She took part in important collective events, from Identity and Difference at the Venice Biennale in 1995 to The Leonardo Syndrome in the same year in Stupinigi, and the Primavera del Disseny in Barcelona; other appearances in Steyr with Material Konzept Struktur in 1998, at the Konkrete Kunst Forum in Erfurt in 2005 and at Villa Pisani in Stra, also in 2005. Important personal exhibitions in Berlin (1991), Brussels (2000), Turin (2011).
He was an architect, teacher, historian, photographer, and artist. Born in Turin to a Biella family, he taught at several European universities, including the Politecnico di Torino and the Politecnico di Milano. Collaborator of Alvar Aalto, he then developed his own artistic sensibility that found form in the “Theory of structural design”. He conceived the Chapel for the Artist’s Mass and Nuvola Rossa (Red Cloud) inside Palazzo Carignano. In the 1980s, in his home/workshop in Pino Torinese, he founded the Maaad, Museum of Applied Arts and Design Architecture, and the Centre Pompidou dedicated a room to him for a year, acquiring his works (2018-2019).

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Laura's drawings




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Leonardo's slides

Leonardo Mosso and Gianfranco Cavaglià, project for the exhibition "Another Italy in the flags of the workers" Museo Nazionale del Risorgimento, Director_ Vittorio Parmentola, Turin 1981, photo by Leonardo Mosso

Leonardo Mosso and Gianfranco Cavaglià, project for the exhibition "Another Italy in the flags of the workers" Museo Nazionale del Risorgimento, Director_ Vittorio Parmentola, Turin 1981, photo by Leonardo Mosso

Leonardo Mosso, "The Chapel for the Artist's Mass", photograph by the author of the model and interior, 1963

Leonardo Mosso, "The Chapel for the Artist's Mass", photograph by the author of the model and interior, 1963

Portrait of Alvar Aalto and Leonardo Mosso during the inspection for the project of villa Erika, Moncalieri, 1969, photograph by Gianfranco Cavaglià

Leonardo Mosso and Gianfranco Cavaglià, staging project for Museo della Resistenza, photo Leonardo Mosso, 1980

Leonardo Mosso and Gianfranco Cavaglià, staging project for Museo della Resistenza, photo Leonardo Mosso, 1980

Leonardo Mosso, "The Chapel for the Artist's Mass", photograph by the author of the model and interior, 1963

Exercises of Professor Leonardo Mosso's Ornamental Plastic Course, photograph by Leonardo Mosso, 1960s
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Laura's Diaries
Since the very early 1970s, Laura Castagno has kept a diary of checkered notebooks in which she notes down topics, artistic ideas, sketches and design ideas.

4-dicembre-2002

5-agosto-2017

12-e-13-marzo-2003

13-e-14-dicembre-2002

21-maggio-2017

21-maggio-2017-1

28-dicembre-2002

30-luglio-2017

31-dicembre-2002
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Leonardo's personal notes
Research, Structure, and Choice. 1961-1967, History and Critique of the Teaching Experience in the Ornamental Plastic Course Taught by Leonardo Mosso at the Faculty of Architecture in Turin















Credits
Circolo del Design
presents
Archivi d’Affetto
Curated by
Maurizio Cilli
Sara Fortunati
Stefano Mirti
With the patronage of
Città di Torino
With the contribution of
Regione Piemonte
Episode 01
The House of Laura Castagno and Leonardo Mosso
Direction
Sara Fortunati
Curated by
Gianfranco Cavaglià
Maurizio Cilli
Stefano Mirti
Project Coordination
Marilivia Minnici
Art Direction
Fionda
Website
NewTab Studio
Communication
Nicoletta Piccolo
Marianna Peracchi
Press office
Spin-TO
Project controller
Enza Brunero
Administration
Aline Nomis
With the patronage of
Città di Torino
Main supporter
Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo
With the contribution of
Regione Piemonte
With the collaboration of
IED Torino
NABA, Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti