The appeal of taking on Homo Faber, Guadagnino explained on the day before the exhibition’s opening, was “the idea of dealing with something that I’ve never really dealt with.” After two of the foundation’s senior members, Hanneli Rupert and Alberto Cavalli, paid a visit to the set of Queer in Rome and proposed the collaboration, Guadagnino began to identify parallels between curating an exhibition of this nature and directing a film. “Creating a space that could hold together an exhibition of craft was immediately fascinating to me, because I think my job has always been to find a way to tell a story within the coordinates that I’m given,” he added.
In the case of Homo Faber, those coordinates must have been at least a little daunting. When walking through the exhibition spaces, which you could easily spend an entire day doing, the scope and ambition of the project is mind-boggling. To find a focus, Guadagnino explained, he and Rosmarini looked to the past—and specifically, the work of the Veneto region’s most celebrated architects from across the centuries, from Palladio to Carlo Scarpa. “I think this, for us, has been a tremendous experience of reflection on many of the great inspirations that have led our ideas of architecture and interiors,” he added. “But at the same time, we wanted to look to the future of craft, to the savviness of [makers today]—that, I believe, is the best place to be.”
