The end of the 19th century marked an epochal turning point for mass production. On the one hand, the definitive improvement of industrial machines makes infinite quantities of goods immediately available, on the other hand, the introduction of the decimal metric system permanently eliminates the correspondence between body parts and measurements, defines a common language and unifies the production of objects all over the world. These marchigian-made tents, produced around 1880, although they seem distant from us due to visual and cultural codes, are instead totally contemporary; they are no longer measured in arms, as the monumental spaces for which they are built were designed, but with a new dimensional system, thus interrupting any proportional relationship between the building and its furnishings. In the same years, with the refinement of the industrial light bulb, electric light finally broke into private homes, radically transforming our relationship with natural light. And it is precisely with one of the distinctive elements of the garage space, the electric neon light, that these curtains are confronted; moving away from the walls, they become an autonomous device with respect to the supporting structure and define a space in a space. Declining in a new way, attributing other uses to objects that seem distant from us is perhaps the only solution to make them adhere to contemporaneity, revealing their unactuality. In reality, the fenced space that is created takes us back to the dawn of the architectural discipline, to the single-cell element of the tent, where all the functions were concentrated in the textile element, in addition to the residual one of shelter from sunlight. Now, as in a large lamp, it is the light that is contained and protected.
