Just as a novice architect might arduously fashion a replica of their favourite building, James Angus has made a copy in aircraft plywood and medium density fibreboard (MDF) of Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana, an exemplar of Fascist architecture situated in Rome. Only Angus has recreated the Italian Modernist tower four times over and joined each of his four models end to end and twisted them to create a möebius loop. The möebius loop is a three dimensional form that only has one edge and one side, an emblem of infinity that defies physical laws. Invented by German mathematician, August Möebius, the loop is a fitting form to describe art and architecture’s perpetual cycle of self-reference.

Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana is an intriguing play with form and space, an Escher-like contortion, resembling the embellished marine forms found in Renaissance collections more than Modernist design. What is in reality a strident, phallic skyscraper has been simulated and transformed into an elegant, feminine form where the repetitious colonnades of the Italian building read as decorative striations on a larger than life organism. The unfinished Fascist monument has been made complete as an ornate orb small enough to be enveloped by the human body.