“I’m interested in combination. I’m working on procedures of combination that can preserve distinction, diversity and independence. It is a design approach, and a communication strategy as well.”
Niccolo describes his multidisciplinary work as being at the intersection of architecture, art and science. “I explore methods of integration that are not smooth; where the combined do not bend gently to each other. Instead they experience a sort of intersection which simultaneously acts as the joint and the separation between the combined items. I describe this condition as a ‘hypersection’ - a generative intersection.
“Think about my first collaboration with [avant garde fashion designer] Iris Van Herpen: the Magnetic Motion Dress. Is it truly a dress? Surely not. It is uncomfortable. It is rigid. It is fragile. But it’s also obviously not architecture. It occupies the threshold between couture and architecture, without being either of them. Its intensity lies exactly in the fact that it escapes all easy definitions. Through an intersection, we created a new object that was capable of generating its own novel field: a hypersection.”
This meeting of and tension between mediums, ideas and forms is built into the foundations of Niccolo’s body of work. “I decided to study architecture because, in some way, it reflects my character. Architecture combines art with engineering; aesthetics with functionality. This duality is part of my personality that is instinctive and rational; passionate and reflective.”