d+a | Issue 116 • Jun/July 2020

/ INFRASTRUCTURE / 34 PERCEPTION-ALTERING DESIGN  Set on the 470,000m² industrial site of the former Eridania sugar factory, the furnace building and smoke line of the biomass plant extends 110m long and 40m high, while the chimney reaches 52m in height.   To dematerialise this imposing volume, the architect studied the Razzle Dazzle technique, which was developed by artist Norman Wilkinson as a type of disruptive camouflage. British and American warships were painted in contrasting, irregular shapes with dark and light stripes, making them a visually-confounding target. Before the advent of radar, this radical paint job was used in misleading the enemy as to the vessel’s type, speed and direction.   “[Razzle Dazzle] consists of a series of lines and graphic signs that interrupt and face each other, which confuses the observer’s perception, making it difficult to precisely estimate the distance and size of the object,” explains the architect.  Vaccarini reinterprets the Dazzle camouflage as a hybrid between an artistic technique and local inputs; a transposition GIOVANNI VACCARINI, GIOVANNI VACCARINI ARCHITETTI BELOW. Taking cues from the Razzle Dazzle military camouflage technique, the building is enveloped by large triangular surfaces that offer mutable and faceted displays of itself.