On the 7th of April 2025 and during the Milan Design Week, the PALIMPSEST project officially presented the artistic project ACQUA LAMBRO, conceived by the British-Irish duo gethan&myles, to the city of Milan in the open spaces of the Leonardo Campus at the Politecnico di Milano.
ACQUA LAMBRO is a project of art, design, and ecology built around an “impossible idea”: transforming the water of one of the most polluted rivers in Europe into a prestigious mineral water. Halfway between speculative design, situationist provocation, and environmental activism, the project aims to reopen the possibility of a reciprocal relationship of care between the Lambro River and the people of Milan.
ACQUA LAMBRO is composed of two artworks:
- A macchina di gioia is a machine-sculpture made with materials recovered from the river. Through filtration and evaporation, it transforms the contaminated water of the Lambro into an “impossible” mineral water. The water collected from the river contains pollutants such as suspended solids (sand and mud), organic matter (bacteria and microorganisms), and chemical substances (especially nitrates and phosphates). After passing through the machine, the water was analyzed by ERSAF (Regional Agency for Agricultural and Forestry Services) and was found to be pure and drinkable.
- Il mondo è un inquinante, of which a prototype is presented here, offers this purified water in glass bottles handcrafted by glassmaker Carlo Cereda. The project will be “marketed” along the Lambro River through a fake advertising campaign.
Making the event even more engaging was the site-specific performance by LostMovement, who, with a choreography inspired by river dynamics, guided the audience through a performative journey across the campus, symbolically leading them to the ACQUA LAMBRO installation.
“The body invades urban and everyday spaces, like a stream that meets, shapes, and moves obstacles, debris, and human beings. Movement explores the relationship with unusual, unconventional spaces, creating a new landscape through dance. Thus, art serves the river, creating a meeting between artists, citizens, students, and researchers. Water becomes the inspiration for an urban incursion that invites the viewer to reflect on sustainability, the ecosystem, and relationships with others.”
The ACQUA LAMBRO project, conceived by Irish artists gethan&myles, is part of the PALIMPSEST experimentations, a European initiative within the framework of the New European Bauhaus, which promotes sustainable landscape transformation processes through creative practices.
Check out below selected photo materials from the event. Photo Credits: Edoardo Tomaselli.
Published on: April 11, 2025
