Tax Credit Furniture
Fake Authentic - Mistakes, Fuorisalone Milano
Built interventions in Italy largely focus on improving the energy efficiency of the existing building stock, driven by a tax incentive program known as the “Superbonus 110%.” Launched in July 2020 as part of Italy’s post-pandemic recovery strategy, the scheme has approved over 150,000 applications and mobilized more than €30 billion in funding, offering tax credits of up to 110% on construction costs. Tax Credit Furniture invites a critical reflection on the contemporary construction industry and its alignment with new building performance standards. While this shift is essential to meet the urgent demands of the climate crisis, it is also transforming how—and with what materials—we engage with the built environment. One such material is graphite-enhanced expanded polystyrene, a thermal insulation product that has come to symbolize this transformation. Its overproduction and speculative price hikes illustrate the unintended consequences of the incentive. In cities where polystyrene façades have proliferated, what remains is often waste and offcuts—still eligible under the tax credit scheme, and thus funded by the state. The installation is constructed from 0.4 cubic meters of such leftover material, exposing the sensitive and fragile qualities typically hidden beneath layers of plaster. The resulting furniture piece is a carefully composed assemblage of these material “orphans,” stripped of their intended architectural destination. The result is an ambiguous object—“furniture” only in name—whose function is merely suggested through volumetric articulation. In its form, it echoes elements of architecture or perhaps an architectural model. Just as volumes allow buildings to mediate their presence within the urban fabric, here volume becomes a tool for dialogue—between the object, its environment, and the people who inhabit it.
