The House
WE ALL NEED A LITTLE LUNACY IN OUR LIVES.
House of LÜN is,
an experiment in The Art of Living.
A multidisciplinary cultural and experiential practice exploring the relationship between people, place and culture.
the rooms before
FOR MORE THAN TWO DECADES,
I WORKED INSIDE THE HOUSES THAT SHAPE CULTURE.
I was usually somewhere between the person with the impossible idea and the people trying to make it real.
It taught me many things. Among them: every element can be technically correct and you can still know, immediately, that something is off.
A room.
A bag.
A company.
Sometimes an entire life.
I became interested in the difference between what something intends to be and how it is actually experienced.
Chandra Recchi is the founder and creative lead, setting the questions, reading the field and assembling the people and perspectives each inquiry needs.
THEN THERE WAS THE HOUSE
CASA MENTUCCIA
Up a winding dirt road,
behind an olive grove
in the hills of Umbria, is Casa Mentuccia.
Once a derelict barn, she had been restored by an American artist, then loved and left by an English actress.
She came to me wild, overgrown and waiting. Casa Mentuccia taught me something simple, places are not neutral.
I remembered how much intelligence there is in a room, a garden, a table, a season. Each changes how we think, feel, relate and notice.
Casa Mentuccia became the physical manifestation of House of LÜN: a place for research, gathering, making, conversation and occasional residency.
At Casa Mentuccia
The Return.
Residencies.
Suppers and salons.
Research and fieldwork.
The occasional experiment that did not need a business plan first.
HOUSE OF LÜN BEGAN HERE. NOT WITH A BUSINESS PLAN, BUT WITH A QUESTION.
HOW MIGHT WE LIVE WITH MORE ATTENTION, PLEASURE, IMAGINATION, AND RELATIONSHIP?
WHAT WE BELIEVE.
How something feels matters as much as what it says.
People are shaped by the conditions around them.
The answer is rarely the first question asked.
People, places and institutions become more compelling when they become more themselves, not more like the category.
Progress does not always mean reinvention. Sometimes the most radical move is to recover what is essential and give it new form.
Beauty has function.
The senses are part of intelligence.
The new is richer when it remains in conversation with what came before.
Human beings need more than efficiency.
Making is a way of thinking.
The world becomes more interesting when people, cultures and disciplines are allowed to meet in unexpected ways.
A good life is not something to optimise into sameness. It is something to inhabit more fully.
HOW THE HOUSE WORKS.
The medium changes. The inquiry is the continuity.
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We enter the world around it through fieldwork, observation, research, conversation and experience.
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We bring together the people, perspectives and disciplines the question needs.
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We bring what we discover into the world.
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A Happening, Edition, publication, Commission, place, programme, journey, collaboration or something we could not have specified at the beginning.
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Each inquiry leaves behind knowledge, relationships, stories, collaborators and cultural memory that the House carries forward.
THE HOUSE, NOW
The form changes, the curiosity remains.
Today, House of LÜN moves between self-initiated inquiry and commissioned work.
Some questions become Happenings.
Some become Editions.
Some become writing.
Some become private work.
Some become Commissions with founders, places and institutions.
All of them begin by paying closer attention to what is already alive.
Each inquiry adds to the House. Its research, relationships, collaborators, stories and archive.
ENTER THE HOUSE.
NOW
What is happening in the House.
WORK
Private & Organisational work with Chandra
NOTES
Things we are noticing