ongoing

Alcova is an ongoing experimental prototype for a future cultural institution in development by Joseph Grima (Space Caviar) and Valentina Ciuffi (Studio Vedét). Currently operating as a nomadic platform for art and design in and around Milan, it activates forgotten sites and spaces of historical significance, temporarily recasting them as venues for performative activities.

2018 - ongoing
Alcova, Milano

2023

Curation and Exhibition Design for "AALTO – Aino Alvar Elissa – The Human Dimension of Design", MAXXI - National Museum of 21st Century Art

14/12/2023–26/05/2023
MAXXI - National Museum of 21st Century Art

2023

Exhibition design for Sharjah Architecture Triennial, The Beauty of Impermanence: An Architecture of Adaptability

11/11/2023–10/03/2024
Sharjah Architecture Triennial

2022

Exhibition design for “Unknown Unknowns - An Introduction to Mysteries”, The 23rd International Exhibition of Triennale di Milano.

15/07/2022–11/12/2022
Triennale di Milano

2022

We are excited to announce that the Pavilion of Uzbekistan at the 59th International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia will be designed and curated by Space Caviar with Sheida Ghomashchi. The Pavilion of Uzbekistan will be a platform for a collective and interdisciplinary reflection on the relationship between art and technology. It will take as its starting point the seminal work of Muhammad ibn Musa al Khwarizmi, a scientist and polymath born and raised in the city of Khiva (present-day Uzbekistan), whose book Kitab Al Jabr Wa-al-Muqabala, later introduced to Europe in a Latin translation under the title Dixit Algorizmi, laid the foundations for contemporary computer science. The pavilion will be an extension of an ongoing investigation which began with the exhibition Dixit Algorizmi presented in 2021 at CCA Tashkent curated by Space Caviar with Sheida Ghomashchi.

20/04/2022 – 27/11/2022
Arsenale, La Biennale di Venezia

2021, 2022

Non-Extractive Architecture: On Designing without Depletion is a live research platform focused on rethinking the balance between the built and natural environments, the role of technology and politics in future material economies, and the responsibility of the architect as an agent of transformation.

21/03/2021 - 31/01/2022
Palazzo delle Zattere, Venice

2021

Exploring the seminal work of ninth century Uzbek scientist and mathematician, Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwārizmī. The exhibition unpacks the influence of the polymath’s work on today’s technological acceleration, modern day culture, and Western innovation.

04 October - 15 November 2021
Centre for Contemporary Arts
Tashkent, Uzbekistan

2021

The book: Non-Extractive Architecture: On Designing without Depletion Vol. 1 establishes a theoretical framework for a new approach to architecture - one based on long-term thinking, material resources and their subsequent landscapes, and the integration of community values into the construction industry.

Publication series of research initiative Non-Extractive Architecture

2021

The Game is a meditation on the hypothesis of a world without restrictions on the freedom of movement.

1-19 September 2021
Bari International Archifestival

2020

Exhibition design for “Home Stories: 100 years, 20 Visionary Interiors” at Vitra Design Museum. Exploring the history and future of the private interior through images, documents and artifacts related to 20 groundbreaking spaces that have changed the way we live.

08/02/2020–23/03/2020
Vitra Design Museum

2019

47 years after Haus-Rucker-Co’s Oase N. 7 burst through the facade of the Fridericianum in Kassel as part of Documenta 5, an exhibition at Nilufar Depot showcasing a new generation of designers became an opportunity to revisit one of the most iconic architectural interventions of the 20th century.

09/04/2019
Nilufar Depot, Milan

2018

The first comprehensive exhibition on the work of Cesare Leonardi. An architect and photographer, in the course of a career that spanned more than four decades Leonardi has continuously challenged the boundary between design and artistic practice.

23 February - 16 April 2018
Museo Arte Contemporanea Villa Croce
Genova, Italy

2018

A display system for the presentation of design pieces, temporary exhibitions and artworks conceived for Volumnia, a platform for art and design situated in the cavernous interior of a former church in the heart of Piacenza.

Chiesa di Sant’Agostino, Piacenza, Italy

2017

An experimental collaboration in urban design, during 25 workshops along 6 municipalities, with 300 citizens.
Kolenspoor City project is a temporary independent social framework where any citizen of the Limbourg region can actively play a role while re-imagining step by step the existing geographies, infrastructures, economies and activities of their lands.

30/09 2017 – 08/11/2017
ZLDR Luchtfabriek
Belgium

2017

Player Piano seeks to reframe the question of a post-labour society in historical terms. It prefigures a future (or maybe remembers a past) society that establishes itself on the island of Abraxa, the future site of Utopia—a landscape-as-collage built on millennia of mythologies, technological breakthroughs, societal conflict and class struggle.

9 March- 9 April 2017
Biennale Internationale Design Saint-Étienne 2017
Cité du Design, Saint-Étienne, France

2016, 2017, 2018

Arcipelago Ocno is an archipelago of floating islands that functions as an aquatic piazza for the city, extending Mantova’s urban fabric onto the lakes that surround its historic centre.

Città di Mantova, 2016 - 2018

2015

RAM House is a dwelling prototype that explores the home’s response to a new definition of privacy in the age of sentient appliances and signal based communication. Does your home have an airplane mode?

04/06 – 31/08 2015
Museo Villa Croce, Genoa
14 – 19/04 2015
Atelier Clerici

2015

Blockchain is a digital docudrama set in in the limitless universe of Minecraft. The film follows the ghost of Walter Gropius on an extended dèrive through ten of the game’s worlds, shadowing him as he ponders the social and political fundamentals of creativity.

Online

2014

During Biennale Interieur 2014, the abandoned Broelschool in the centre of Kortrijk, Belgium became the location of a site-specific intervention combining a physical dérive through the sprawling building with a timeline-based investigation of key events in the history of domestic architecture.

October 2014
Biennale Interieur in Kortrijk, Belgium

2014, 2015

Fortress of Solitude’ is an essay film in three chapters investigating the technology used to make the home smarter. The internet and alternative network protocols are the backbone to home automation.

7 – 11/10 2015
Architectuur Film Festival Rotterdam

23/05 2015
Barbican Centre, London

27/02 – 26/03 2015
CC Strombeek, Belgium

31/01 – 27/02 2015
White Hole, Genova

17 – 26/10 2014
Biennale Interieur Kortrijk, Belgium

2014

SQM: The Quantified Home, produced for the 2014 Biennale Interieur, charts the scale of this change using data, fiction, and a critical selection of homes and their interiors—from Osama bin Laden’s compound to apartment living in the age of Airbnb.

Publication launched at 2014 Biennale Interieur

2014

SQM is a research into the condition of this unfamiliar space known as home—a speculative assemblage of historical artefacts, moments of contemporary domesticity collected on social media and films presented in the Theatre of Everyday Life, a temporary installation in the Rambla at Kortrijk Xpo.

Biennale Interieur
Kortrijk, Belgium
17 – 26 October 2014

2014

Hosting a series of discussions with designers, writers, and curators, Domesti-city has launched the SQM research project that Space Caviar presented at Biennale Interieur (17–26 October 2014) in Kortrijk, Belgium. Tracing market fluctuations, failed ideals, global flows, and new fabrication techniques, SQM will make the case for a renewed discussion on the home.

8 — 13 April 2014, Salone del Mobile 2014: Atelier Clerici, Palazzo Clerici, Milan, Italy

2016, 2019, 2020

The HQB Lamps, selected from the hundreds of shops in the Huaqiangbei electronics market, are a symbol of the network - based economy, fast production and open design that Huaqiangbei embodies.

2016-2017 research fellowship organised by M+/Design Trust: Shenzhen, China 4 – 9 April 2017, Atelier Clerici: Milan, Italy
24 November – 22 December 2019, Galleria Luisa Delle Piane: Milan, Italy
6 – 9 February 2020, Nomad Circle: St. Moritz, Switzerland

2014, 2015

FOMO is a print magazine generated with a custom made software which gathers social media interactions based on metadata filters by a specific hashtag and/or location. The collected data is arranged in a print-ready PDF according to a predefined design template, then printed, bound and distributed on the spot by the FOMObile, a collapsible mobile publishing platform.

25/04 – 27/09 2015
V&A Museum London

14/03 – 13/09 2015
Vitra Design Museum

07/10 2014
Matera

16 – 22/06 2014
Design Miami Basel

5 – 6/06 2014
14th Venice Architecture Biennale

9 – 11/04 2014
Palazzo Clerici, Milan

2016, 2017, 2018

In 2016-2017, in the context of a research fellowship organised by M+/Design Trust, Space Caviar relocated to Huaqiangbei, a neighbourhood of Shenzhen most widely known as home to the world’s largest electronics marketplace.

M+ / Design Trust Research Fellowship 2016-17

2015

99 Dom-ino takes the centennial of Le Corbusier’s design as the trigger for a survey of Italian domesticity and the relationship with the landscape over the last 100 years.

30 September 2015, Lisbon
23 April 2015,Munich
14 November 2014, Florence
7 June – 23 November 2014, Venezia

2013, 2014

Located in Lisbon’s main planetarium, Planetário Calouste Gulbenkian, Neoasterisms is a participatory project commissioned as part of “experimentadesign 2013: No Borders”. Neoasterisms examines the history of astronomical cartography as a site of cultural hegemony and a metaphor for histories of political decision-making, proposing a new map of the stars based on an open, participatory and culturally inclusive standard

9 November – 22 December 2013, Lisbon, Portugal

8 – 13 April, 2014, Atelier Clerici, Milan, Italy

2013, 2014

The essence of Isola delle Rose is in its nature as a political act of critical synthesis through design. Rosa’s project prefigured the collapse of faith in representative democracy at the dawn of the 21st century, preemptively responding to this crisis through the deployment of a mix of political activism, architecture and technology. Archaeology of Rose Island revisits the remains of the platform on the seabed of the Adriatic, re-examining its relevance in the context of the contemporary surge of interest in libertarianism and technological emancipation from State control.

Exhibition Dates:
6 December 2013 — 28 February 2014, Shenzhen, China
24 May — 2 August 2014, Maastricht, Netherlands

2012, 2013

Commissioned by the first Istanbul Design Biennale in 2012, Adhocracy is an exhibition questioning the impact of new technologies and network culture on the practice of design in the 21st century. The exhibition brings together an international group of designers, architects, artists, filmmakers and thinkers working at the intersection of design, politics, public space and information design.

Exhibition dates:
13 October — 12 December 2012, Karaköy, Istanbul
4 May – 7 July 2013, New York
4 September – 12 October 2013, Limewharf, London

2010, 2011

The New City Reader is a newspaper on architecture, public space and the city, published as part of The Last Newspaper, an exhibit running at the New Museum from 6 October 2010 to 9 January 2011.

6 October 2010 to 9 January 2011, New City Reader 1st edition, New York
New City Reader 2nd edition, Istanbul

2011

Utilitas Interrupta, an exhibition at experimentadesign 2011: Useless, is a research on how the construction and subsequent abandonment of infrastructure can be taken as a form of cultural memory, an index of society’s evolving priorities

Experimenta Design 2011, Lisbon

2011

Inspired by an email exchange dating back to 2002 between philosophers Lieven De Cauter and Dieter Lesage, Project Heracles is a commentary on the progressive closure and fortification of the European continent’s boundaries.

Exhibition dates:
17 – 20 December 2013, Brussels
12 April 2013, Milan
22 – 24 January 2012, Munich
21 July – 4 August 2011, London

2011

The World would be visible from the International Space Station, and it would look, more or less, like our actual world. To tell the truth, The World looked like a world fragmented into private real-estate lots, because The World was, in fact, a huge yacht harbor. Asia, Africa and the Americas had been broken to sellable bits.

Exhibition dates:
28 September – 27 November 2011: Experimenta Design 2011: Useless, Lisbon

2010

Our interest in the Diwaniyah rests in its concrete role as an architectural/spatial typology that is also a protagonist in the contemporary history of Kuwaiti political life. The Diwaniyah is both a real thing and a metaphor; it is an architectural typology whose precise historical role in defining a nation’s political identity can be clearly and extensively documented.

Exhibition dates:
2 December 2010 – 10 January 2011, Harvard University, Graduate School of Design

2010

Landgrab City is an installation commissioned by the Shenzhen & Hong Kong Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture and located on Shenzhenwan Avenue (Nanshan), a busy shopping district in the city of Shenzhen.

Exhibition dates:
December 2009 – January 2010: Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture, Shenzhenwan Avenue, Nanshan

2022, ongoing

Vaia Stage is named after the extreme weather event occurred in 2018 in some north-eastern regions of Italy destroying about 42.500 hectares of forest. The stage is entirely build out of wood from trees felled by the Vaia storm in order to help the community make use of the vast amount of lumber they have invested in removing from the mountains before it rots. Together with community volunteers the Vaia Stage was assembled during public workshops held at Space Caviar studios. The stage and overall masterplan of the Terraforma festival is designed to be re-used and evolve for many years to come.

Masterplan and stage design for Terraforma Festival

2018, 2019, 2020

Focusing especially on the work realized within the Estúdio Palma, the exhibition by Nilufar Gallery, designed by Space Caviar, presents the largest collection of Lina Bo Bardi's furniture ever brought together.

16/04 2018 – 08/03 2019
Nilufar Depot, Milan

2022

Dixit Algorizmi - The Garden of Knowledge sets out to question the origin myths and narratives surrounding modern technologies, using the lens of contemporary artistic practices to explore their forgotten roots and overlooked resonances with distant places, times, and cultures.

Catalogue published to coincide with the opening of the exhibition Dixit Algorizmi – The Garden of Knowledge, Venice Biennale 2022