You are graduated with Zaha Hadid and Patrik Schumacher as rapporteurs, you have worked in them studio and for a short time with Rem Koolhaas. After this, you have founded your studio. This high level training, how much did it affect the work you are doing today?
From Zaha Hadid’s experience I learned a lot, specially how a big team works. It’s not too much architectural style that interested me, but the studio’s structure and how to manage a big project. In an high level project we have to regard many variables, like how is the management, collaborations with clients and consulting, also abroad. I had the possibility to think the architecture in a different way. It was an important step for me.
2. Mirror Houses project has a language, both for the materials and the shape, clearly contemporary. The choice to use mirror surfaces allows to make it mimetic regard fields of apple orchards that surround it. In practice, you tried that when thinked it’s possible to make contemporary architecture really integrated in the territory, without using place’s materials. What is the relationship with the context in your project?
The context is essential. Now we have active projects in many different countries where we make studies and analysis which they go beyond the physical and immediate context. Cultural parameters become significant and they affect strongly our projects. History, people’s mind, technology and culture are important elements and they have to be taken .. We always try to take these parameters and to reinterpret them in a new way, more contemporary. With a few words, social and cultural aspect of the place became the filter of our projects.
3. In Oberholz Mountain Hut project, in layout and or from above, we can see very well that a singular volume turns himself becoming three. How this idea is born? Could you explain the project?
The idea starts from the context. We have done a place’s analysis and we have see that there was many cabins built with wood, a material coming from the area. Talking about sustainability, the relationship between people and material in the past is very current. Another feature of the place is the pitched roof. Starting from this elements we decided to reinterpret in a different mood. For project needs, we had to host several people within a relatively small space, but we wanted to avoid getting a “canteen effect”; our goal was to find a solution to succeed in obtaining more intimate spaces. From these reflections and needs came the idea of creating three progressively different volumes that look out on the mountains and make them protagonists.
4. Could you tell us about the Future Space Pavilion installation that you presented at the 2018 Milan Furniture Fair?
Future Space Pavilion is an installation designed inside the court of the University of Milan in collaboration with DomusGaia. The building is purely Renaissance and therefore represents an interesting historical context with the typical features of the era: proportion, geometry and symmetry. The structure of the installation is contemporary and sustainable, we wanted to show what can be done with a material such as wood. The structure allows a nice play of lights during the day, a play of light and shadow. That is why we have designed benches to sit on to enjoy the view.
Also in this project there is a strong relationship with history and culture. The context, a Renaissance court, becomes something to be reinterpreted in a contemporary way.
5. After this answer, I would like to tell you how is your relationship with the structural section?
From the beginning of project we involve engineers and we try to go beyond the “classical structure”. For us, the engineers are not enemies, but an integral part of the project. Working in team is our strength.
6. Now, a question that I will ask also to some other studios. Why do you think in the Northern part of Italy, at the borders with Austria and Switzerland, it is easier to find high-quality architecture studios?
Motivations could be education and schools. I think that in the faculties of architecture in Vienna or the ETH in Zurich or in Germany the educational level is much higher than in Italy. These universities condition the architecture of the present. In the west of Austria or in Switzerland, there aren’t only small but high-quality companies in addition to international studies. I think this is partly a consequence of the universities where the designers studied.
Italian universities will be more international. I am referring to the “Polytechnic of Milan” or “La Sapienza” of Rome as the only universities where more international influences are breathed. The others focusing too much on the past and little on the future, they are too linked to art and history.
In universities should come back to teach architects who make architecture. For example, in the ’70s and’ 80s the whole architectural world was in London and very important architects came out of the AA School.
7. In Looping Towers project this big construction doesn’t host only homes but also many services, like green fields and running truck. The building becomes a little vertical city and have a place where people can meet. These ideas were already dear to Le Corbusier. Could be a right interpretation?
No, for me Le Corbusier wanted to divide residences and working spaces. Instead this hosts different needs, is an all-purpose space. Looping Towers is an important project for us because it will be built in an almost abandoned area, an industrial area with some offices and houses. The project creates a new motor for the entire area, this is the great thing, like it’s happened for Fondazione Prada, in Milan. Fondazione Prada was born in an area that now has a different worth than the past thanks to the impression that this quality building has given. In our project we must not only see the building, the basic idea starts from wider considerations because the aim is to revitalize the whole area. It is important to create a connection with existing buildings and services. Everything is also extended with the aim of using less and less machines, as is the case in much of northern Europe, where they mostly use trains and bicycles.
8. Do you come up with some big changes that new technologies have brought to living architectural spaces? And if so, is the way it is currently dealt with enough?
Following the introduction of new technologies, the first thing that comes to my mind when we talk about a great architectural change is the use of new materials. New materials not only on a static level but also on sustainability. Making a joke, we can say that we are in the iPhone’s age but cities for many points of view are still trivial. The apartments aesthetically will not change much, but the technologies will make the homes more comfortable and they will simplify life.
Just thinking to 3D technology that allows direct printing of materials and structures.
To give an example, there are more and more houses that are completely printed and built with new materials. These allow a saving of forces and times. Cities will be smarter cities than the current ones we live in.
