Robin Hood Gardens Disappearing Worlds

The film by Urban-Think Tank reminds us that the Smithsons’s ideas about the ties between buildings, users and architectural sites no longer have the value they once did.

- Piero Golia

This time I had prepared in advance, and prepared well. I had decided to speak about the film The Column by the Albanian artist Adrian Paci from the first day I agreed to write this column and had just been waiting for the right time.

I waited months before writing about it. It is a video with a romantic feel, recording the story behind the creation of a marble column, starting from a block purchased in China and transported by sea to Europe, to Venice.

Although nothing very sensational happens, the video keeps spectators glued to the screen as it emanates a somewhat mystical appeal, like a mantra. It narrates, in its entirety, the route taken by a piece of a mountain transformed by a dozen or so workers, who travel with the block and sculpt it during the voyage, combining the movement with human action and its cultural impact, its ability to lend meaning to objects.