ma0 goes to China / work in progress #1

We are now finalizing the redesign of the functional layout, the  public spaces and the facades of the Xi’an Milan Park in Xi’an, for arch. Gaetano Di Gesu and Eawe srl. A new experience in a new world, searching for a  communicative architecture that could mix two different traditions in a contemporary building dedicated to Italian fashion and culture.
Following some clues of the project, still not rendered in the final version.

Above, our first facade made in word (!), while searching for elevations that could mix adevertising and architectural partitions.
Below two details of the building facades that reinterpret the shutters of an Italian palazzo using bricks, mixed with chinese geometric patterns.
Soon the final images of the whole complex…

 

 

 

 

Back to Piazza Risorgimento

The benches are aging and blocked since the opening, but nonetheless still working as a good playground!

Expost: ma0 invited at Innesti – Grafting, 14th Architecture Biennale Venice

One month for designing a future for the Expo area in Milan: an exciting challenge to be delivered for Innesti-Grafting, the Italian Pavilion at the 14th Venice Architecture Biennale curated by Cino Zucchi.

B-SIDES 03: Doors of Interaction

We love doors, the basic element of interaction in architecture. Simple and basic, the door means since ever openness in the defensive realm of architecture to light, air and the unpredictable coming from an outer space (where outer is also the room next to the one we are).

That’s why we have have a recurring idea, nearly an obsession, to create a building with no walls, just doors to redefine continuously both the relationships between in and out, and in between the interior spaces, that has generated more than one project (the elastic spaces series, the final proposal for an housing building in via Quintino Sella in Milan, but also the panel for the 2006 Biennale like an advent calendar was using doors -windows- to let the visitor get inside the project)

When we had the insane idea to participate to the Milan Expo Pavillion competition, in our first attempts (before luckily giving up) tried to adapt the idea to the program, with a facade made of windows/doors that could transform  the building in a communicative object.

The doors/windows entirely covering the four facades of a simple volume would act as pixels of a screen, reproducing any kind of  facede, and managing the communicative and energetic exchanges between in and out. And revealing fragments of the italian glorious tradition…

Panorama d’Italia

Starting the tour with Panorama and our circular soft space, waiting for good pictures with the visitors interacting with the soft screen…

Photo by Franco Cufari