INDOOR RAIN

Indoor Rain

Since the beginning of human history, we have built shelters to protect ourselves from unpredictable and adverse weather conditions. Nowadays we spend on average 90% of our time in indoor environments. “Indoor Rain” examines possible ways to reconnect people with meteorological changes and therefore with nature.

Populations have always built shelters to protect themselves from the external meteorological conditions. By doing so, humans have generated the idea of two stringently disjoint worlds at the antipodes: the indoor world – a world of comfort, security, and predictability – and the outdoor world – the world of nature, constant change, and unpredictability. Nevertheless, by creating this distinction the human being got progressively disconnected – both physically and psychologically – from his primary living space, the space that gave him birth and that ultimately regulate his life: nature.

Nowadays people spend on average 90% of their lives in indoor environments, this means that we are given to experience natural meteorological changes and the passing of time mostly only in form of sunlight intensity fluctuations. “Indoor Rain” is a project that aims to investigate possible ways to reconnect – in the indoor space – the human being with the external meteorological changes of nature.

A few years back I was having a beer with some friends under al old shelter when it suddenly began to rain. After a few minutes, the old shingle roof started leaking in several points and drops of water began falling rhythmically on the table in front of us. Thoughtlessly and maybe out of genuine curiosity, we re-arranged the empty bottles of beer on the table in order to catch the several falling drops. The result: an unexpected sound/light performance that was suddenly filling the space around us. At this very exact moment I’ve started wondering for the first time why do we keep 100% of rain out of our buildings at all. Wouldn’t be much more natural, lively, and interesting for us to have this wonderful miracle of nature coming at least partially into our buildings when the weather “decides” so? Wouldn’t this be able to reconnect us in some measure with the constant changing of nature and with its primordial harmony?