Over the Emptiness: interpretations and expression of the term in the disused cinemas in Milan

The concept of emptiness, since ancient times, has often been associated with a negative connotation. The following paper analyses and investigates new possible forms to cross this meaning towards a new added value. Emptiness is everything, it is a center, it is space and a place, it is lightness, it is immateriality but at the same time it is also fullness. This paper talks about a research, starting from the first term definitions to a design opportunity, where the concept of Emptiness is not only synonymous with “nothing”, but becomes above all a physical manifestation of images and sounds. To interpret the Void as a physical and a spiritual reality, as it shows itself through culture and art, as a built reality, and above all as an urban effect through the figures of the greatest philosophers, critics, artists, architects and directors, who have always designed their definition of Void. To transform this research subsequently into a spatial experimentation to enhance the urban value of Emptiness, as the leitmotif of an exhibition system that aims to redevelop the disused cinemas of the Milanese territory. After a research in terms of abandoned buildings, which for years have become ‘empty-urbans’, have been selected some abandoned cinemas in Milan with the opportunity to give new life to their spaces, staging the declinations and interpretations of the Emptiness previously composed. The project that follows the research, consists of a scenario with the aim of combining the concept of living the Void as a visual and spatial experience and a curatorial setting of case studies selected. The result is a system of relations between empty interpretations and the various abandoned theatres in the territory, with a specific in-depth study of the project in the spaces of a historic cinema in the center of the city of Milan: Manzoni cinema.