Within the framework of his research on the “unbalancing system,” Ugo La Pietra designed a project for a dwelling pod connecting private space and urban fabric by means of communication and information devices. Presented during the historic exhibition Italy: The New Domestic Landscape (MoMA in New York, 1972), the “Telematic House” (Casa telematica, 1971), symbolized by the elementary form of the triangle, is a collection point for the processing and redistribution of public information towards the private space and vice versa. This project aims to broaden the body and the domestic pod’s field of physical perception to achieve a new awareness of behavioral and mental characteristics which the individual endures inside the urban fabric. In these zones created for the constant exchange of information with the city, the Ciceronelettronico records sound data, and then makes them available to everyone, while the individual booth of the Videocomunicatore enables users to send audiovisual messages, which are then rebroadcast on screens placed around the city. For La Pietra, these microstructures are “models for comprehension” that break through the barrier created by the object between us and reality, enabling us to extend the scope of direct participation in and perception of reality. Anticipating the digital revolution and the use of new technologies, for Ugo la Pietra, the house becomes “a macrostructure, capable of interacting with the information system.”
