Similarly to what Liv Ferracchiati did in "How Things Shake Reflected in the Water", a new production of the Piccolo Teatro di Milano, the project of the first-year students of the Design Laboratory of the Auic School of the Politecnico di Milano, tries to "cross" the Chekhovian text of The Seagull in search of a suggestion based on which to construct the place of a possible scenic action, a space able to evoke an idea of living that finds its representation in the relationship, existing and characterising, between inside and outside.

Aldo Rossi wrote, "(...) Chekhov's interiors are more like villas than country houses and are always extremely sensitive to the seasons. You always find the same elements of the can-cello, hydrangeas, car tyre marks on the gravel, a table about to be opened, greetings and words quite far away. The architecture remains in a few details as always, waiting for the shot of the seagull, the light from the staircase, the boat sailing along the lake as if in a glass dome" (Autobiografia Scientifica, 1999, p. 44) highlights how, in Chekhov's play, 'nature' plays a leading role and how the architecture of the house, identified through a few general and, at the same time, universal elements, becomes an evoked, rather than represented, 'background'.

The exercise, proposed to the students of the first-year Architecture Design Workshop in constant collaboration with the Piccolo Teatro, takes up this specific quality of the Chekhovian drama to try to question the possibility of giving form to a room - the word defines the abstract concept of being without giving it a precise functional destination - that acquires its character thanks to the relationship established with the external space, with the landscape within which it is built.

From a didactic-methodological point of view, the students started by studying some exemplary single-family houses of the modern era whose characterisation of space is given by how they interpret the natural environment in which they are located. Each of these architectures was studied and represented graphically and volumetrically through models to recognise their size, nature, relationship with light and the consequent theatricality of space. Still, an effort was made to understand the proposed idea of living and what place/room in the house best represented it.
The identification of the room, built on and with the landscape, was considered the starting point to try to relate to 'The Seagull'. As in Chekhov, the fifteen projects exhibited in the foyer of this theatre also take on the natural landscape (water, even if conceived in different forms, is the element through which always evokes the presence of a particular natural place) as the leading actor. The room, therefore, understood as a place to stay, is also the space to look at nature, the theatre of life that symbolically contains the small stage that forms the backdrop to Chekhov's drama.
The fifteen cardboard models, on a scale of 1:33, presented in the exhibition, through the construction of a sort of "magic box" equipped with a "viewfinder", voluntarily placed in a precise position to force the point of view, are to be understood as an attempt to represent an idea of habitable space theatricalised by the landscape on which they look out: a synthetic space, measured by the few furnishing elements introduced from time to time, recognisable but above all strongly characterised.

Architectural Design Workshop 1
Martina Landsberger and Francesca Di Maria with:
Michael Bader, Francesca Barbieri, Anna Maritano, Davide Mazzucchelli, Alessandro Ponti

With students:
Chiara Fanni - Pier Francesco Fantin - Sharon Farinella - Emma Favaro - Giorgia Favaro - Giovanni Favuzza - Elena Fazio - Emilia Fazio - Sofia Fazio - Lucrezia Fekete - Mattia Felicetti - Lucrezia Ferrachat - Alisia Ferrara - Marta Ferrari - Olimpia Ferrari - Anna Ferré - Elisa Ferretti - Matilde Ferretti - Isabella Ferri - Ettore Ferroni - Laura Feruglio - Giulia Finocchiaro - Chiara Folcio - Anna Fontana -Sara Forlani - Alice Formica - Marta Fortunato - Simone Fortunato - Angelica Fossati - Lisa Fragiacomo - Agnese Francescon - Ginevra Franchi - Zoe Franchina - Alessio Frappolli - Matteo Fratus - Giorgia Frazzetta - Anna Fregonese - Edoardo Fumagalli - Sofia Fumagalli - Giulia Fumiani - Sofia Gagliardi - Francesco Galbiati - Benedetta Galeotti - Giorgia Gallazzi - Francesco Gallo - Maria Gallois

This project was made possible thanks to the constant collaboration of the Piccolo Teatro, which, for some years now, has been actively involved in the construction of the first semester of the Architectural Design Workshop 1. We would therefore like to thank, first of all, Anna Piletti and Andrea Zaru and then all the organisational and technical staff, as well as Giuseppe Stellato, the set designer of the show "How Things Tremble Reflected in Water", for helping us to complete this adventure.