The Italian Cultural Institute-Bangkok and Bangkok Kunsthalle present a lecture by the architectural duo Lemonot.
The lecture is a journey of discovery through their projects from the last 10 years—through a series of drawings, mini-films, performances, scenography, and inhabitable sculptures—revealing a unique, active, and constantly evolving architectural practice, creating a performative space within the rational and mathematical architectural space.
The Lemonot duo was born from the partnership between Sabrina Morreale and Lorenzo Perri, who graduated together from the Architectural Association (AA) in London in 2016. Their academic work is a crucial part of the practice; between 2018 and 2019, they taught as professors at the INDA in Bangkok. Sabrina Morreale currently teaches at the AA in London, while Lorenzo Perri teaches at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. Both are program leaders of the AA Visiting School El Alto in Bolivia. They also work on exhibitions, short films, and performances. The studio is based in London but travels around the world, including cities like Vienna, Stockholm, and Bangkok.
In an interview with ELLE DECOR, the duo explains the meaning of their name: “Lemonot is quite intuitive. We were looking for something with an underlying ambiguity, one that didn’t clearly refer to an architecture firm or an artistic practice,” they explain. “It stems from our fascination with lemon, both in terms of color and material, and the fact that there are infinite varieties, both natural and man-made. It’s a name that reminds us of Italy, given that we’ve lived in London for many years. The final ‘not’ indicates our rejection of the reduction and simplification of processes and phenomena. Since lemon is an ice cream flavor that’s not easily combined, some ice cream parlors claim that ‘lemon is single.’ If lemon is single, we don’t like it” – Lemonot.
The two architects have different but complementary visions in their approach to a project. Sabrina begins with images, objects, suggestions, and what she calls productive naivety. Lorenzo, on the other hand, expresses a more technical approach. “We always find ourselves in agreement at the beginning and end of projects. Whatever the type of work we undertake, the set of references we start with almost never has anything to do with our core discipline. We always agree on these intuitions. Then, as the project develops, our personal approaches emerge. Architecture is a medium for doing other things, a way to develop a story.”
Lemonet simply, concisely, and poignantly describe the philosophy behind their projects as: an intersection between architecture and performance, a rejection of process simplification, a work based on the accumulation of objects, architecture as a shared platform, a combination of spatial and body art, a relational performance, a celebration of the performative act, and, finally, a constantly evolving interdisciplinary practice.