Buildings on Buildings, a project by artist Aldo Giannotti, comprises three interventions in the Vienna cityscape. The first project "Flying House" was realised in November 2016 on Yppenplatz 4 in Vienna’s 16th district, the second mural "Highest Building in the World" in May 2017 on the sidewall of a residential building in Gumpendorfer Straße 40-44, 1060 Vienna and the third work "Addition" can be seen on Grangasse 6, 1150 Vienna, also since Mai 2017.

Buildings on Buildings #2: Highest Building in the World has the house participate in a worldwide competition of the highest constructions and, as such, refers ironically to a global superstructure delusion.

In his art practice, Aldo Giannotti uses drawings as a way to explore concepts of social plasticity. These are, in a subsequent step, examined for their resistibility and potential by being embedded—by way of performance, installation, or sculptural execution—in the rough surfaces of real-life settings.

This working process also informs the Buildings on Buildings project: drawings whose subject matter is spatial relationships and architecture are set in direct contact with precisely that subject matter. For this purpose, Aldo Giannotti uses façades and bare side walls of residential buildings as a material substrate for his drawings. His idea is to create a feedback loop between the subject matter of the drawing and the context that drawing is embedded in.

The interplay of large-scale drawing and urban surroundings is supposed to spark “productive redundancies” whose sounding board is urban space itself and whose resonance prompts reflection about their way of living in urbanites. The title Buildings on Buildings is an example of such a productive resonance with its double meaning of buildings painted onto buildings and buildings thinking about buildings.

Text: Giorgio Palma