FAT / The Museum of Copying 
FAT / The Museum of Copying 
FAT / The Museum of Copying

Responding to the curator’s theme of the Common Ground, London based office FAT (FASHION ARCHITECTURE TASTE) will introduce The Museum of Copying at the 13th Architecture Biennale in Venice (29.08.12 - 25.11.12). In opposition to general ideas like the genius loci, the building context and architects as creative inventors, FAT defined the common ground of architecture in the concept of copying - in facsimiles, imitations, repetitions, duplicates, doppelgängers and replications. These concepts had an enormous impact in the history of modern architecture and replaced the idea of the original bit by bit.

Located in centre of the museum the FAT’s Villa Rotonda Redux serves as perfect expression of this thought. The Villa Rotonda - the last original or perhaps the first copy - built by famous italian renaissance architect Andrea Palladio is reduced to two quarter sections, an inner and an outer one. One is the mould formed by polystyrene blocks and one the the cast formed of polyurethane foam. This composition deals with positive or negative, cave-like or geometrical-organized effects and reduces the Villa Rotonda to its lowest common denominator: The quarter section which enables the Villa Rotonda Redux tho reproduce itself by rotating around the main axis.
The result leads to a complete Rotonda and finally to the common ground of european architecture. 

The Museum of Copying will also host the San Rocco Magazine including the presentation of the “Book of Copies”, San Rocco Issue 5 “Scary Architecture” and their new Call for Papers.

Villa Rotonda Minibook by FAT 
Misused Originals by S/F