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ADS6: Body of Making

Beatrice Amaia Rita

Beatrice Amaia Rita

Originally from Varese (IT), she has completed her undergraduate studies between Switzerland and UK. Beatrice's professional practice has been designing and delivering temporary spaces for set design and art galleries. Whilst working at Gonzalez Haase AAS in Berlin, she delivered high-end fashion stores and art galleries in Europe and Asia.

Since school, she was involved with FAI (the Italian National Trust), where she used photography as an investigative tool for the archive of the built environment and the analysis of site-specific cultural structures. Beatrice's images and film photographs often depict Man-altered Landscapes, addressing how the prevailing image culture affects the construction and production of the built environment. 

Her final project expanded her interests and reflected on the Italian postwar suburban expansion and industrial interventions within the A1, the first European highway built in Italy in the 1950s.

Degree Details

School of Architecture

ADS6: Body of Making
Beatrice Amaia Rita

The project explored Italian advertisement languages, and the peninsula landscape considered a place of production and consumption of Italian goods. The investigation focused on the 1950s when Nina, seamstress and Beatrice's grandmother, moved from south to north of Italy to work in the textile industry. 

Contrary to the canonical media output, Spaziovisione proposes Italy's reading as dramatic and romantic: a space arranged by temporary construction works and industrial architectures. The areas are all designed to capture human attentions speaking for the woman workspace and production. 

The videos and photos underline a multiplicity of layers. Seeking to understand the mutation happening, in the film Once Upon a Time in Como, the seamstress notices how architecture can communicate for her. Is architecture a form of advertisement?

By foregrounding, rather than erasing human presence, the photographs and films place the audience into a stance of responsibility towards the landscape's future. The body of work renders the human existence engaging with the A1 constructions (highway of the 1950s), assessing how human production and its need to be desirable can sustainably melt into one another in the Italian landscape.

The Silk Presence
Still from film The Silk Presence
Still from film The Silk Presence
Still from film The Silk Presence
Still from film The Silk Presence
Still from film The Silk Presence
Still from film The Silk Presence

The project interviews an industry on the outskirts of Como, where silk production grounded since 1930. The family-run business explained its production phases, history and development within the city. Moreover, the collected information created a character that personifies Nina, Beatrice's grandmother working for a textile manufacture. In doing so, the project envisions an artifice of 1954 Como where a woman's voice walks us through her daily routine and workspaces, constructed in front of the A1. 

With thanks to Tessitura Valli S.P.A. and Nina.

ColourfulCommunicationFashionIndustrialIndustrializationInteractionItalyLand's EndlandscapeTextureworks on paperWorkspace
Green Screen Reconstruction
Green Screen Reconstruction

An essential infrastructure changed the costumes of Italians: the A1. The construction started in 1954, and the highway in only eight years unified the north and south of Italy. This event had an impressive impact on the landscape, accentuating the rise of production and consumption of Italian goods. The catastrophic usage of industrialisation was showcased in many contemporary films, as Deserto Rosso by Michelangelo Antonioni depicting Ravenna’s industries from the eye of an alienated woman.

Experience designExperimental filmGreen ScreenIndustrialIndustrializationItalyNarration / StorytellingNarrativeSpatial ExperienceStorytellingTextiles
Giallo - from the storyboard of Once Upon a Time in Como
Giallo - from the storyboard of Once Upon a Time in Como
Verde - from the storyboard of Once Upon a Time in Como
Verde - from the storyboard of Once Upon a Time in Como
Rosso - from the storyboard of Once Upon a Time in Como
Rosso - from the storyboard of Once Upon a Time in Como

A woman's voice walks the audience between three workspaces: Giallo, Verde and Rosso. Like humans, they seem to interact between them. Is architecture able to speak to everyone? Is the construction a form of advertisement?

AdvertisementadvertisingDigital InterationsGreen ScreenHistoryIndustrialInfrastructureItalyLand's EndLandscapesNostalgiaPast
Once Upon a Time in Como
Experience designExperimentalExperimental filmIndustrialIndustrializationItalyNarration / StorytellingNarrativeSpatial ExperienceStorytellingTextiles
Still from the interview with Nina
Still from the interview with Nina
Still from the interview with Nina
Still from the interview with Nina
Experience designExperimentalExperimental filmGrandmotherIndustrialIndustrializationItalyNarration / StorytellingNarrativeSpatial ExperienceStorytellingTextiles
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Royal College of Art

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Kensington Gore, South Kensington,
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