ECAL at the Festival des Cabanes
20.05–28.09.2026
Villa Médicis, Rome

For its fifth edition, the Festival des Cabanes brings together six original creations and a multi-disciplinary artistic program, at the crossroads of architecture and landscape. The idea of the hut is the starting point for a dialogue between architects, artists, designers and landscape architects around various concerns, such as sustainability and the coexistence of natural and man-made environments.

On this occasion, ECAL Master Product Design and Mutina present Façade, a project in which a single wall becomes architecture, transforming a fragment into a real space that reshapes its surroundings — casting a shadow, offering a place to pause, and carving out a new passage through the landscape.

The installation draws inspiration from the pictorial practice of trompe-l’œil, which originated in antiquity and was reinvented during the Renaissance. Trompe-l’œil, meaning "to fool the eye", aims to blur the line between reality and illusion. Façade perpetuates this Roman tradition further by questionning the boundary between surface and depth through chromatic variations, as well as the repetition of a subtly modulated elementary motif.

The project was selected and supported by French designer Ronan Bouroullec.