Silkocoons, La Sapienza Roma / Shangai Expo 2010

The Silk Road represents a recurring feature in the history of mankind: relationships and connections between different nations and societies.

The silkworm embodies its essence.

The protective form of the cocoons, their connected structure and their final product - life in essence - represent a natural metaphor for human societies and their connections, with the best quality of life they generate. The cocoon, the production site of the silkworm, is the first original and original engine of the Silk Road.

The connection between the archaic and the contemporary finds its emblem in the relationship that can exist between the silk fiber and the optical fiber. The silk fiber connects and protects the cocoons; optical fiber strengthens the technological society.

The optical fibers of today, which carry information that is the circulation of our societies and which are often hidden, become present in this project as a weaving of wired silk, which surrounds and integrates buildings similar to silkworms and cocoons. While the exchange of information occurs through optical fibers, the movement of people between buildings is permitted by a network of elevated transport routes.

These wired and connected silkworms are modular structures that change in number, location, geometry and internal relationships along the Silk Road.

East of the Silk Road there will be a silkworm with a single optical fiber projecting into space.

As we proceed westward, silkworms increase in number, with increasingly complex connections, representing the development of the societies that enter into relationships.

If the single silkworm with its fiber towards the sky represents birth, the origin with the hope that it carries within, the connections of the more articulated silkworm settlements become a language that is completed, in the expression of the degree of interaction and progress. of each site.

A single optical fiber, which crosses the Silk Road in its entire length, connects all the sites.

Taken together, the Silkocoons become a unique monument to our need to recognize the essential roots of our society, to the point of understanding that there would be no Silk Road without silkworms.

Raul Gabriel