It is no secret that from an operative standpoint the internet has proven its worth: as a tool that enables the easy and cheap transfer of data and communication, it has revolutionized architectural working procedures and allowed numerous offices to build globally on an hitherto unknown, at least...
Read moreWe are dealing with fire in a very specific spot: the island of Stromboli, Europe’s last permanently active volcano. Here, we are going to relate to fire in three ways.
First, as a physical presence, as a phenomenon that can be intellectually analysed or sensually perceived. Through...
The desert – always moving, never static; like an ocean of sand.
TOMMASO GIOVANNOLI
An intervention without scale confronts the infinity...
The idea of turning a periphery into a centre is to become independent. You have to think
independently to identify what your problem is.
When you...
PAINTING WITH AIR
At an artistic level, the picture could be painted with the remains of the sky;
making the enclosure ready to receive and...
Palafitic
Gino de Giorgi: On wet or marshy land, architecture is always inserted with care, with the greatest precaution. These sites...
We try to teach how to design, how to produce, how to think and make buildings happen. For me, this is closely connected to the dialectic between concept (abstract conditions) and matter (physical conditions). This kind of synthetic duality is the starting point of our profession, in which an idea...
Read moreIsabelle Ramseier
The project derives from the typology of the ruins. A ruin generally keep contact to the earth. The more distant part as the roof...
JP I grew up at my grandfather’s small farm in central Finland, so I have
a farm boy’s mentality. I was the only boy within five kilometres and
had to invent things for myself to do. When you have a lot of time,
there are, of course, endless miracles happening in nature. So, my...
Philosophy is usually concerned with concepts; abstract concepts like
causality or space and time. Water is not so much a concept as a kind of
pre- or proto-concept: a word that was used before conceptual thinking
really began.
Pieces of water
If you cut this building into two parts,...
No one in Brazil is concerned with thermal bridges, and this is not because we don’t care, but it‘s simply a fact that there is no negative...
Read moreZurich – Scheuchzerstrasse, 1916-1919
“I was never told that one does something for practical reasons. Nothing was done that might be “useful.” All the things I wanted to grasp were equally valid. I moved along a hundred roads at once without having to hear that any was more...
A Robinson Crusoe-like spirit of adventurousness and desire to mark out human territory permeates the work of Angelo Bucci. In both a historical perspective considering the voyages of the classical navigators and their conquest of a primordial American wilderness, but also in terms of an...
Read moreThe materiality of place in what is locally available—the elements—is always the starting point for our projects. We also excavate a site very deeply; by excavation, I mean understanding its dynamics, its politics and its cultural expressions. For me, the site is not just the piece of land; it...
Read moreOne definitely brings a lot of one‘s practical experiences into architecture, a lot of one‘s childhood memories, one‘s experiences throughout life. You are constantly sampling the environment and understanding closely the space and content of your environment. As in our case, when coming from...
Read moreWhat makes us human is the liberty to invent things that do not exist in nature. Undermining that fact, J. M. W. Turner in his paintings deliberately depicted not the direct impressions he observed, but filled the canvas with his imaginative power. Vaguely defining the main outlines of a scenery on...
Read moreMinimizing the building’s footstep on the bounteous ground, Sandro Elmer’s library soars in form of a light steel-structure into the air. Using the surrounding vegetation as a curtain and the elevated view towards the surroundings as a main asset, the project’s ease also epitomizes today’s de-materialization of books into lighter modes of knowledge transfer.
Read moreFrom the viewpoint of adaptation Xiong Sun’s project demonstrates that architecture does not solely operate within its immediate surroundings - the ever present contextual influences and bioclimatic factors - but can also provoke the engagement of a larger landscape, in this particular case the...
Read moreSean Godsell’s architecture is one of ambiguities: monumentality is achieved through lightness, easiness of living by hand of discipline in plan,...
Read moreBesides your practical activities, you have written a lot. Theory and Practice go sort of hand in hand. How would you differentiate or relate these two forms of architectural expression?
It is a good question. First of all I do not believe in the separation of theory and practice, which...