the mechanics of strangers

In a world that encourages detachment and efficiency over empathy, truly recognizing the richness of another person's world is a radical and difficult act. This piece attempts to slow down our gaze- to direct care, attention, and gratitude toward the individual lives that unfold. Set in the town of Macerata, a place layered with cultural, historical, and human texture, the project illuminates the quiet stories and intricate systems at work beneath its surface. This work suggests that the act of merely existing and responding to external demands is the path of least resistance, but not the most meaningful one. By looking beyond what is immediately visible, we engage with the silent architectures, social, emotional, and infrastructural that shape our environment and connect us.

The project also draws inspiration from the Manifesto of Futurist Mechanical Art (1922), co-authored by Ivo Pannaggi, Enrico Prampolini, and Vinicio Paladini. Their vision of the artist, designer, and architect as a singular, integrated figure serves as a guiding principle. Like Pannaggi’s work, this piece is an attempt to harmonize the mechanical with the human, the system with the soul, and to elevate both through aesthetic and conceptual clarity. Ultimately, this is a meditation on presence: a call to notice, to listen, and to consider the profound richness of lives that are parallel to our own.