Fulvio Morella’s ‘Pars Construens’ at Gaggenau Milano Fuses Braille and Architecture

Fulvio Morella’s exhibition ‘Pars Construens,’ curated by Sabino Maria Frassà, opened at Gaggenau’s showroom in Milan in 2022. The show marks the 200th anniversary of Louis Braille’s tactile writing system. Morella’s ‘Blind Wood’ series translates architectural landmarks—such as Lucca’s Piazza Anfiteatro, Verona’s Arena, Rome’s Pantheon, and Milan’s Roman amphitheater—into wooden reliefs that visitors are encouraged to touch. The works combine sculpture, high relief, and painting, protruding from their frames. The exhibition also includes ‘Cantami, o Musa,’ a trumpet-like piece referencing Homer’s Iliad, with the word “Omero” in Braille, and ‘Omphalos,’ inspired by the omphalos at Delphi, inviting viewers to peer inside and see their own reflection. Frassà describes the project as exploring a “profound architectural-existential syncretism,” drawing on Francis Bacon’s concepts of ‘pars destruens’ and ‘pars construens’ and Lavoisier’s principle that nothing is created or destroyed, only transformed.