For a (more) playful 2022

by ma0now

During Christmas Holidays we get together with friends and relatives that we didn’t see for a while, and we spend some time telling shortly the most notable events of the year that is going to end, before the ritual wishes for a great new year.
Something like this post where we condense the nice things we will bring along of this – still – complicated 2021…

Playgrounds on a bar
The most important event of 2021 has been for ma0 the (re)start of the project for Piazza Umberto a Bari with engineer Maurizio Franco, introduced by a long and rich participative process, brought along with great interlocutors that helped to improve the project and refine ideas to accomplish a preliminary project we love a lot. Most of all, we love the Playbar – in the image above – a small pavilion in an historical garden/piazza that won’t be changed so much. A little building where to relocate the public toilets and a bar, in continuity with the kids’ playgrounds, a “densification” of public activities in one small, interactive, playful and light kiosk that evokes the “cassa armonica” and “luminarie” of the local tradition.
Ready to start the following design phases!

Windows on a (digital) wall
Last september we have accomplished a long work for Interno 1, the concept space of GS1 Italy in Milan, in the framework of a great project with IdLab as leader, ma0 with Giulio Pernice and Simone Memé for the interaction design and Cliostraat for the interior design. Our project started with the design of a digital wall to explore the universe of meanings, serivces and opportunities behind the barcode and more broadly the values and products of GS1, and completed with the design and development of an app dedicated to the “Order to Cash” process.

A museum on top of a water pumping plant
With SWS Consulting we have developed a feasibility study for an ehibition space in one of the most amazing water pumping plants we have in Rome, where architect Palpacelli designed in the ’70s a technical infrastructure as if it was a spaceship – or a relative of the Centre Pompidou in Paris. For Acea we have proposed two different solutions, to integrate the new spaces in the existing situation, and cope with the regulatory framework. Here you have the one we like the most.

A roof over the slope
From 2021 and late 2020, catastrophic years in terms of recognition received in competitions, we will keep nevertheless this last project in Switzerland, together with other beloved projects from the past, unlucky – or wrong – in the competitionsthey took part, but always in our hearts and minds!

A rugby stadium in the making
Last but not least, in 2021 the building of our Rugby Stadium in Catino / Bari has started! Hopefully we’ll have in the next new year’s wishes something more than a render… In the meantime, we wish you a happy new year!

Ketty Di Tardo, Luca La Torre, Alberto Iacovoni / ma0 studio d’architettura