Gianni Pettena. Anarchitecture at Crac Occitanie: MUSEUM EXHIBITION

"Anarchitect": it is with this provocative term that Gianni Pettena defines himself in a manifesto text from 1973.

As an unclassifiable figure, Gianni Pettena seeks to escape categories and chooses to practice architecture without architecture, exploring the expanded field of art and critical theory.

Among visual arts, performance, teaching, and writing, he never ceases to question the foundations of architecture, challenging its established order, functionalism, and the capitalist and consumerist logics at play in society, specifically in how cities are designed today.

Asserting a non-professional, intuitive, and sometimes playful stance, Gianni Pettena proposes ways of building that connect humans to their natural environment, working with earth, water, wind, or humble materials like paper or cardboard. Born in Bolzano in 1940, Gianni Pettena grew up amidst the mountains of northern Italy, a suggestive landscape he would later call his "architecture school."

The exhibition at Crac Occitanie is an exceptional opportunity to discover iconic works by Gianni Pettena, reactivated for the occasion or even produced for the first time: the exhibition opens with "Sound Tunnels," one of Pettena's very first works conceived and designed in 1966 but never realized until now. Inside, several life-sized installations are presented, and an outdoor installation literally sets the building in motion.