Handle with Care: Tales of the Invisible is divided in three chapters that are all interconnected. It’s a tribute to human clay and progressive minds who, in the name of humankind, back in the 1960s and the1970s, called for a revolution invested in caring about the noble practice of architecture focused on people. In this retrospective walk across the mindscapes of the former architectural Europe and/or European architecture, it celebrates imagination and passion, individual effort(s) and collective endeavours, dreams and hopes, as well as the courage to act in the name of love for all humankind. These three chapters are related to each institution’s archives: Tales of Non-Architectures: The urban wonder of Parco Centrale by Franco Purini and Laura Thermes, from the collection of MAXXI - the National Museum of 21st Century Arts; Tales of the Permissible: The Architects of the Tallinn School, from the collection of Estonian Museum of Architecture, and The Paperers’ Tale: Smer B, Faculty of Architecture and Civil Engineering, from Museum of Architecture and Design of Ljubljana. 

This is a journey into whatever architecture may (not) be and whatever form it may (not) take, across the landscapes of care and the mindscapes of the wizards from Estonia, Italy and Slovenia. A look at architectural exercises from the past that constitute helps us understand the current context that requires a humanist reflection on different forms of care.

This showcase is curated by Sonja Lakić from Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Diego Sologuren, a Spanish practitioner based in Switzerland, who designed the scenography. Both emerging creatives were selected from the Future Architecture 2020 Call for Ideas. The exhibition is part of a larger project of questioning architecture collections and archives in general and highlighting the potential of the Future Architecture Members archives and aims to have further iterations.