Hidden Forces

From September 21 to October 15, 2026, the Esprit Nouveau Pavilion hosts the exhibition Hidden Forces.

The exhibition brings together Federico Perugini’s Relics series and four signature columns, which create a link between the works and the exhibition’s main themes.

The Relics reproduce, at full scale and on a single sheet, the pillars of emblematic buildings, tracing a history of the reinforced-concrete frame in architecture. These works reject traditional pictorial material in favour of the materials of construction itself: concrete and steel. Rather than representing, they present an infinitesimal section of the real structure.

Arranged in pairs, the works act as conceptual pillars and open the space to the exhibition’s four themes: Tools, Relationships, Regulations and Intentions.

Each theme is made tangible through a signature column, conceived as both a spatial and interpretive device. Beyond their structural function, the columns reveal their ability to generate architecture: a represented column (Archizoom Associati), a commissioned column (Duccio Maria Gambi), a construction-site column (de Vylder Vinck Taillieu) and a column as a point of view on reality (Le Corbusier).

The exhibition reconstructs a map of forces and tensions that are usually imperceptible, revealing deeper systems operating behind the visible form of architecture.

The questions and perspectives emerging from the exhibition also provide the basis for a series of talks and conversations taking place during SAIE and CERSAIE 2026. Architects, researchers, designers and curators will be invited to discuss how these forces continue to redefine the role of architecture, its methods and the conditions under which it is produced.