Each of Orizzontale’s works comes about through reflection on contemporary issues and it uses architecture as a means for proposing solutions or for raising public awareness. Some themes held dear to Orizzontale are community, sustainability, urban aggregation and cities. To propose alternative ideas on these subjects, alternative processes that would be capable of supporting them were needed. Beginning with this assumption we can understand why Orizzontale’s architecture is created in public spaces, and is physically made up of local components, together with the local people and ultimately, they have a brief life-span because more than architecture they are “urban machines”.
1. How is Orizzontale’s configuration different to a normal architectural studio?
The idea of Orizzontale came about when we were still at university: returning from periods of study abroad, we felt the need to put into practice what we had learned and explore new ways to approach architecture. From this desire our first projects were conceived, around which, we gradually consolidated the current group. The idea of a procedural, hybrid and experimental approach has characterised every aspect of our way of working: Orizzontale is a collective, a studio and a laboratory and it is also difficult for us to see the limits between the different identities. And we sort of like this instability, which allows us to space ourselves out and continue to explore different areas but at the same time we feel a strong interconnectivity. In practice, the group structure operates in a highly horizontal manner, with an alternation of roles in the projects and distribution of tasks regarding the internal management of the studio. Construction is also an activity that has definitely characterised our way of exploring architecture and our configuration: in the construction phase we like to have the complete team and during the shared construction workshops the group expands to include collaborators, students and citizens.
2. Can you explain your idea of using the laboratory approach as a design strategy?
We use the laboratory tool to create open processes, capable of stimulating and embracing new contributions in all phases of project construction. By involving people in the workshops, our intention is to restore a concrete sense to the participatory process by involving citizens an active part of the construction of their habitat. The experience of shared construction takes on a training nature and lays the foundations for the creation of close relationships, while at the same time establishing lasting links between inhabitants and the environment that they have participated in constructing.
3. Can working in the public space help bridge the great cultural, social and economic differences that are increasingly evident among the people who live in the city?
Public space is the dimension in which we live daily as inhabitants, and where we have decided to act professionally as architects. If architecture builds habitats, there is no terrain more representative than public space: it is like a litmus test compared to the contexts to which it belongs. Public space is today at the centre of debates on the development of cities, unlike 10 years ago, but the results are, in many cases, different from those desired. What we are missing is the very significance of these places as spaces for dialogue, growth, exchange and comparison. On the one hand, private investments produce quality spaces, but which are intrinsically oriented towards control and profit; on the other hand, the tools that are used to intervene are often ineffective, untimely, incomplete; or worse still, as highlighted in a recent publication by Interboro Partners, space transformation strategies are used, which often turn out to be “weapons” of exclusion and segregation. Instead, we believe that cities must be open, porous and inclusive systems and that public space is the elective place within which these characteristics must occur. The project must stimulate processes of appropriation of places by those who live in them and facilitate the creation of new models of coexistence. Only in this way can public space be a place of growth and a testing ground for spatial paradigms that lead to new forms of urbanity.
4. What do you mean by the term “urban machines”?
“Urban machines” are transitory devices through which we live in public spaces. The term, deliberately mechanistic, could be interpreted as a reference to a utopian architecture or, even more distant, read in a functionalist perspective. Instead they are “machines” in that they react to the movement of those who live in them and are susceptible, subject to changes in accordance with external solicitations. Like theatrical scenography, they are light, modular and modifiable infrastructures, which allow you to “stage” unprecedented behaviours and relationships within the spaces of the city.
5. Another concept dear to you is the idea of temporary and ephemeral architecture. Why?
Temporary architecture or – to quote Renato Nicolini, who inaugurated a surprising season of the ephemeral in Rome – “the wonderful urban”, is a powerful tool for creating new visions. Through fixed-term interventions it is possible to recover forgotten habits and stimulate the creation of new rituals, giving rise to unexpected situations and releasing latent potential. Beyond their lifespan, temporary interventions leave lasting traces: signs and memories that settle in the territories and that allow us to foreshadow possible future scenarios. In this sense, temporary architecture is an effective tool, within long-term processes, to give meaning to moments of waiting and to test, in a bold and reversible way, new forms of use of space.
6. What do you intend by “municipal waste”?
Waste is everything that is discarded. The materials and products that the city expels daily, but also the abandoned places, the urban voids, habits and relationships forgotten within contexts in constant transformation. All these things represent, if the vision is reversed, an enormous potential: by synergising this waste it is possible to reactivate what has stopped serving a purpose, bringing to it new life and completely reinventing its uses and significance.
7. Today on a planetary level we are witnessing the growth of ever larger and numerous mega-cities within which there are numerous areas distorted by gentrification. Do you have any suggestions for the politicians? Will the rich and the poor be destined to be ever more distant?
Gentrification is one of the great paradoxes of modernism. It seems that it is not possible to imagine processes of regeneration of popular neighbourhoods and suburbs without falling into the inevitable “bourgeoisie” of these contexts. It is not actually a new process in urban contexts, but the speed of transformations in global cities is making it look more and more like a progressive expulsion of the less well-off classes from neighbourhoods that were once public housing and today are at the centre of large investments. The creative class, in which Richard Florida had believed he saw a positive regeneration engine, also suffered the same consequences, being rejected for economic reasons by those neighbourhoods that he helped transform. Is there therefore an alternative way through which it is possible to transform cities by maintaining balance within the system? We believe so, but in order for this to happen, public intervention is essential to guarantee social diversity through the control of the real estate market. And there are virtuous cases (for example, the IBA in Hamburg), where the transformation started from a public initiative and the citizens are the protagonists of new investments. We just need to learn!
8. Why did you decide to become architects? I ask you this question because seeing the work done by Orizzontale you understand that your primary need is not to use architecture to model spaces but perhaps for something much deeper than this to shape society. Could this be a correct interpretation?
Architecture is inevitably connected to the “human” aspects of living and public space is a direct expression of society. It is not possible to intervene in any of these aspects whilst disregarding the other. What moves us is not an ideological assumption, but our aspiration as architects. We want to explore the limits of the discipline, experiment with possible cross-pollination and put together different points of view to respond to the complexity of contemporary public spaces. The role of the architect is changing and collaboration with other disciplines is increasingly necessary: we will see what the effects will be in the long run.
9. Can you tell me about the 8 ½ project?
8 ½ marked a significant moment in our professional growth. Not only for the international resonance of the Young Architects Program competition, but also for the jump in scale of the project in relation to our previous works. 8 ½ is a large relational infrastructure, a scenic machine that inhabits the external Maxxi square and proposes a new interpretation. It is an eight and a half metre-high wall that divides the space and functions as a two-faced stage: on one side a screen covered with 312 craft beer kegs has been transformed into dynamically controlled lights, on the other a gathering arena covered by a curtain of shade cloth . The evening is a setting for events of all kinds, whilst during the day it embraces the daily life and informal meetings of museum visitors. At the edge of the arena, time-controlled fountains refresh the hot summer days and contribute to the creation of small rituals in the use of space. 8 ½ is a project that, still today, fully represents our way of understanding public space. It is a reflection of the dual nature of these places, as a space for privacy and elective relationships but also intrinsically territories of events and the shows. It is a large habitable, modular and dismountable scenography, built by way of a laboratory. Finally, it insists on the themes of upcycling, the ephemeral and the creation of programs and rituals within collective spaces.
9. Can you tell me about the space cabins project?
Another project from our formative years and the period of seeking affirmation for our studio of which we are particularly fond: a delightful adventure, undertaken with many other people in an atmosphere of continuous exchange and collaboration. This is the Osthang Project, the international Summer School that took place in Darmstadt, Germany in the summer of 2014. We were invited to participate by the curator Jan Liesegang of raumlaborberlin together with atelier le balto, Constructlab, Atelier Bow-wow, Collectif Etc, Martin Kaltwasser, Umschichten and m7red. For three weeks Osthang was transformed into a temporary campus inhabited by architects, artists and students who came from all over the world to build the structures that subsequently hosted the “Thinking together” philosophy festival, and still host events and initiatives of the inhabitants and local associations. In this context, we confronted the theme of the residence and we did it starting from the observation of the nearby colony of Matildenhohe, which had hosted a group of Jugendstil artists in the early twentieth century. Matildenhohe’s artists had beautiful houses that they used only in moments of rest: the days were spent in the ateliers and laboratories, places dedicated to creative work. The starting idea was to subvert this dichotomy, letting our cabins allow unexpected uses and promote different levels of sociability. The residences consist of hexagonal plan elements, superimposed and specular to each other, connected by aerial walkways between the trees. The upper part of each is covered with a different material, recovered from the city of Darmstadt and readapted by the students. If the top part was the one dedicated to rest, more intimate and reserved, the area below was a public space in all respects, where you could walk, stop and meet.
10. Can you tell me about the Urbanauts’ units project?
The Urbanauts’ Units began inside RAUM, a laboratory that promotes placemaking projects for a new expansion area in the city of Utrecht. Where the creation of a cultural centre was foreseen by the urban plan, Berlijnplein was temporarily left empty, in which RAUM offers artist residences in order for them to imagine the city of the future and share these visions, mediated by art, architecture and of design, with the inhabitants. Our proposal makes use of a narrative device as the beginning of a new urban narrative: the “Urbanauts”, pioneers of the uncharted lands undergoing urbanisation, are called to redefine through their routes a new circulation system, which reinterprets urban mobility as a recreational experience. In several projects we have used the theme of the boat, “the greatest reserve of the imagination” as Foucault said: boats are instruments of exploration of unknown lands, an ideal space for travel and adventure. Following the metaphor, we built a structure on several levels (the port, or headquarters of the urban people) that functions as a sort of shipyard: inside, a large social table with the features of a sailboat under construction and a boat on wheels with which to explore the surroundings. The latter becomes a mobile interaction device, which navigates the Berlijnplein area by stimulating unexpected encounters and promoting new forms of conviviality. In the meantime, the city is growing around our installation, stratifying its meaning through new uses and integrating the structure into the new urban image: urban users are transforming themselves into a new community.
11. Can you tell me about the Blur installation?
Blur is the setting for the “Nomad Design” exhibition, hosted within BASE Milan for the 2017 Design Week. Blur comes from a question: what is it that creates a temporary space? First of all, it is the limit: the perception of the perimeter allows us to recognise belonging to a community within a space or to define our vital space. In the age of neo-nomadism, the definition of the working or living space is light and modifiable, as are the limits defined by the layout. Fabric walls circumscribe spaces where transparency always lets you sense something beyond, remembering the ephemeral nature of the limit. The construction system, based on a quadripartite fir pillar, in which the beams that connect the elements fit together, allowing the structure itself to be a closed perimeter, free wall, display, set design and internal partition.
