MULTIPLY

Multiply radically transforms a small two-room apartment of an early twentieth- century “casa a ballatoio” by eliminating traces of more recent interventions such as an oppressive beaded false ceiling, a “country club” fireplace, and a poorly oriented bathroom. Instead, it sheds light on the original spatial qualities. Moreover, it gives the rooms a new, unsuspected domestic atmosphere with small but highly targeted actions.
The intervention is concentrated along the central spine. It consists of a structure of minimal surface area and materiality, not to physically and visually take away space from the main rooms, and minimal weight to not burden the precarious existing structures. Details are dry, and the transitions between materials respond equally to technical and compositional choices.
A lightweight concrete platform marks the “intervention ribbon” and houses all the new installations. The vertical surfaces are birch plywood panels fixed to a larch frame or large rotating opaline polycarbonate doors. They disarticulate the volume’s apparent compactness through their motion, constantly reshaping the privacy and proximity relationships between different living functions.
Multiply simultaneously acts on material, constructional and economic aspects. It probes their intimate relationships and explores their spatial and perceptive transformation potential.
Multiply is less for more.

Enrico Forestieri
Schematic design, design development, construction documents, bidding and construction administration
Private apartment refurbishment 50 m²
Milan IT, 2020
Photos: Allegra Martin

Published in Domusweb, 14/03/2022; Archiportale, 24/03/2022; Elledecor, 05/09/2022;

FurReal Estate

FurReal Estate is an ongoing research project about the evolving porous nature of the boundaries between humans and their pets in the contemporary city. It aims at visualizing and mapping how our domestic and urban interspecies environment is radically changing through the sharp lens of a fictional real estate agency in Milan.
FurReal Estate scours authentic real estate listings searching for pets, their tracks, or their surrogates in our homes. It takes possession of these online images and recontextualizes them into an unprecedented visual atlas through simple post-production procedures.
The pictures and plans clearly show that pets are emerging as an influent social group with a voice and a body; they question the domestic “human layout” and (un)consciously transgress the places in which humans seek to allot them (hiding under bed blankets for example), request specific devices for their wellness (floor-to-ceiling- cat trees, …), influence material and spatial choices (furry fabrics, the presence of a terrace, …).
The home is not anymore an exclusively human arena. Instead, it is the meeting place of different species, marked by profound transformations of its territory and ever-shifting boundaries. The influence of such paradigm change is not restricted to the domestic space but reverberates on a broader scale. A constantly updated Google map shows a brand new and previously unknown image of the city based on a web of kinship and reciprocity and extended to a wider assembly of subjects.
FurReal Estate is the starting point for a future transspecies urban theory.

FurReal Estate instagram

FurReal Estate map

Enrico Forestieri
Self initiated research project
Milan IT, 2020 – …

RIFRAZIONI: CBA

Enrico Forestieri
in ARK, n.32, Alessandro Ambrogio Bassano Editore, 2019. pp. 33-38

casatibuonsante architects (Antonio Buonsante, 1989, e Federico Casati, 1988) affrontano la professione con un’attitudine ambiziosa e pragmatica al tempo stesso.
La loro opera spazia da piccole installazioni a proposte per infrastrutture ed edifici pubblici dalla forte valenza urbana . Rispetto ad altri gruppi della stessa generazione, cba hanno un atteggiamento meno ambiguo nei confronti della costruzione: i loro disegni (anche quelli di concorso) cercano in modo ossessivo di prefigurare la realtà attraverso il dettaglio. Questo sforzo non è finalizzato allo sfoggio di un “sapere tecnico”, ma intende genuinamente la realtà (la costruzione) come fase di verifica della congruenza tra idee di progetto e controllo dei mezzi espressivi.
Indipendentemente dalle dimensioni effettive, le loro proposte architettoniche sembrano sempre fluttuare tra le diverse scale, si prestano a letture multiple e interpretazioni inattese. Attraverso una serie di immagini e disegni, si analizza in dettaglio il rapporto tra alcune delle loro strategie operative e gli esiti progettuali.

Here you can find the full article

PERMANENT VACATION

Visby’s touristic vocation stems from its mild climate, beautiful landscape and historical heritage, as well as from its proximity and good connection to mainland cities. However, despite representing a huge potential, tourism is currently tying Visby’s social and economic life to its cyclical temporality. In order to boost the development aspirations of Gotland Municipality, new productive economies and living models need to be introduced, whose timescale extends throughout the entire year.
Permanent Vacation, our proposal for the Östercentrum site, uses architecture as a tool to reproduce and amplify conditions which are usually associated to the exceptional nature and intermittent temporality tourism – such as visual and climatic delight, sociability and closeness to nature.
By associating such conditions to a new set of activities and lifestyles, Permanent Vacation brings them outside the realm of holiday into the daily life of the new inhabitants of Visby.
Permanent Vacation is an artificial landscape that promotes a 365-days-a-year relaxed, anti-routine, contemplative and sociable lifestyle. It does so by altering existing local topographic, climatic and visual conditions and by articulating a wide variety of public and semi-private spaces and facilities: a sequence of “artificial paradises” ranging from outdoor to interiors, from the urban to the domestic scale. Thus, each space is determined by the intersection of altered climatic conditions, programs, landscapes, degrees of privacy or publicity.
Permanent Vacation seeks to facilitate creative hybrids between domestic and work environments (fablabs, live-work), productive and leisure economies, permanent and temporary housing typologies and accommodations, local inhabitants, students and tourists. Through its vibrant mix of uses and conditions, Permanent Vacation aims at extending and intensifying the temporality and urban life of Östercentrum.

Enrico Forestieri, Matteo Pace, Pietro Pezzani
Collaborator: Michele Porcelluzzi
International competition Europan 15
Housing — 8.000 m², public facilities (swimming pool, auditorium) — 5.000 m²), workshops and retail space — 3.000 m², intermodal hub — 6.000 m² and landscape — 8.000 m²
Visby SE, 2019

AS TIME GOES BY

A corner apartment in the Milanes district of Città Studi. An undivided yet not undifferentiated space emerges with the demolition of the pre-existing walls: the marks of the previous partitions alter the rhythm of the space; the different floor finishings (black marquina stone, breccia aurora, terrazzo stone floor and oak parquet) suggest areas with diverse atmospheres; the light, passing through the wide, East and South windows frames, overlaps and intertwines, as a mutable yet cyclical weave, the spatial continuity within the generous living-dining-office areas.

Enrico Forestieri
Schematic design, design development, construction documents, bidding and construction administration
Private apartment refurbishment 100 m²
Milan IT, 2018-20

LIGHTHOUSE

Lighthouse is a mixed-use tower which marks the rapidly changing landscape of Vigentino area (Fondazione Prada, Fastweb headquarters, etc). This building is a shimmering lantern which strategically soars where the dense urban fabric dissolves swiftly into the Milanese Parco Agricolo Sud (Southern Agricultural Park).
The project suggests the demolition of the existing, decrepit block and reorganises the potential volume in a “minimum footprint” scheme: besides this slender tower a new, generous and protected garden finds its place.
Ground floor and first-floor host commercial (a restaurant) and collective (a co-working office, meeting room, wellness area) activities, while residential spaces start from +8.5m: at this height, the view already sweeps undisturbed on all four sides and the traffic noise is muffled.
Tower plans revolve around an eccentric CLT core. Externally they are contained within a deep, structural GL timber grid. This perimetral ring —1 meter thickness approximately— filters natural light inside the domestic space, creates cosy niches and converts into pleasant balconies.
Because of the strong exposure to direct sunlight and to crossroad traffic, an additional protective layer (made with opaline and transparent wavelike polycarbonate boards) is installed onto Western and Southern façades: behind this climatic and acoustic buffer, small loggias or double-height greenhouses complement every room and enrich the domestic experience.
In order to improve natural ventilation and lighting, even the smallest apartments are double or triple-sided. Their wide sliding windows on the perimeter also provide exceptional viewpoints towards the city and the country.
A lighthouse at the gate of Milan.

Enrico Forestieri, Matteo Pace
Collaborator: Matilde Villa
Feasibility study, schematic design
Housing — 1.000 m², retail space — 200 m²
Milan IT, 2019-20

THREE FEET HIGH AND RISING

The project takes advantage of unexpected spatial conditions encountered on an unconventional “rooftop at the ground floor” nestled in a generous, tranquil Milanese courtyard. Its irregular shape is either flanked by tall buildings or fenced by a 2 metre-high wall beyond which you may catch a glimpse of the neighbouring lush vegetation. Although seemingly spacious (150 m2), this “outdoor room” is largely occupied by an emerging structure (40 m2 surface, 2 metre-high) intended to shed light to the underlying hypogeal office space; its imposing volume creates a visual barrier and subdivides the whole space into smaller, disconnected sectors.
The project focuses on the deliberate redefinition of the ground level through a “continuous ribbon” all around the skylight. By modifying the distance between the floor and the current physical & visual barriers, it deeply alters how the human body perceives the limits of the immediate surroundings. The cornerstone of this strategy is a simple yet sophisticated “staircase-stand” made out of CNC machined Carply boards. Unless the existing situation, this structure bypasses the skylight volume –closing the loop around it–, reconnects adjacent yet separated sectors –redefining mutual spatial relations among them– and eventually provides access to the top of the lantern –extending the inhabitable space to a previously unused one.
This outdoor room complements and enriches the standard indoor program. A wide range of hedonistic and formal activities are hosted here: a small arena, a photo shooting background, a casting area, a catwalk, an outdoor meeting room and a chill-out lounge flow along this loop. Their final sequence responds to the sectors variable geometry (space proportions), to the specific border conditions (height of the walls, visual barriers, etc.) and to the sun orientation.
Spring – Summer 2019

Enrico Forestieri, Matteo Pace
Schematic design, design development
Terrace and model agency refurbishment — 150+300 m²
Milan IT, 2019

ENDTRODUCING

Endtroducing reflects upon the notion of #remix in contemporary architecture.
The installation takes over the entire Cubo Exhibition Space at Politecnico di Milano: a small volume delimited by three plasterboard walls. Endtroducing redefines the perception and use of the Architecture Faculty hall, engaging viewers in an ambiguous spatial and visual experience.
A work of “postproduction” on materials and forms echoing what the competition project Garibaldi Isola Civic Centre generates a strange hybrid: an “almost-building”, something in between a scaled model and an autonomous exhibition design. Such ambiguity is perceived by the viewers as they cross the installation’s threshold, and they are faced with the visual mirroring of three different artifacts: the Civic Centre’s original model (1:50), a model of the installation (1:20) and the installation itself.
On the Cubo background wall, two different sets of images are overlayed in a simultaneous looped projection. The first set comprises images from the archive – whose scales span from 5 linear meters to 40 hectares; the second shows “beautiful discards”: casual epiphanies picked from the visual and material byproducts of the daily practice. Images from this second set appear and vanish as in a dream: by overlaying onto the first set of project images, they change their perception and create unexpected, never ending combinations.
Endtroducing is entirely built with plasterboard panels, just like the walls of the exhibition space that contains it. This material epitomises a conditions of genericness in contemporary architecture, featuring with maximum versatility at different scales -from small exhibition designs to entire buildings. On top of that, it is astonishingly similar to materials commonly used for architectural modelling, such as poliplat . In this case, a”non standard assembly” of standard components -like angle sections and C studs- produces a simple yet sophisticated structural reinforcement, which contributes to emphasise the ambiguity of the installation: a building, a piece of display furniture or a model?

Enrico Forestieri, Matteo Pace, Pietro Pezzani
Matilde Villa (collaborator)
Schematic design, design development, construction documents
Installation and video — 20 m²
Milan IT, 2018
Endtroducing is a solo exhibition curated by Gizmo within the series “#REMIX: Architetti nell’Età del Network” at Politecnico di Milano, Scuola AIUC (16 October – 17 November 2018)
Thanks to: Dastu – Politecnico di Milano, Gizmo
Sponsors: GPO Publionda, Knauf Italia

TECNICA MISTA

Forestieri Pace Pezzani
DIVISARE Books #206, NEW ARCHITECTS – MILAN, Europaconcorsi Publishers, 2018

Here you can purchase a copy of the booklet.

A BUILDING BLOCK ON CORSO XXII MARZO

Enrico Forestieri, Jurjen Zeinstra
in DASH – Delft Architectural Studies on Housing From Dwelling to Dwelling: Radical Housing Transformations, n.14, NAI uitgevers, 2018. pp. 96-103

When you walk along Corso XXII Marzo, coming from the Madonnina that is overlooking Milan, the regular rhythm of the quiet late 19th-century façades is suddenly interrupted. A brutalist concrete corner, just next to a prototypical building block in the urban plan of Cesare Beruto, lets you glimpse through it into a courtyard. The moment you enter this space, something remarkable happens: suddenly you are teleported from a 19th-century perimeter-block into what seems to be a long U-shaped 1970’s housing project.
In 1982, the Municipality instructs a group of architects led by Gianni Celada to redesign one of the few -partly decrepit- social housing bastions located in a rapidly gentrifying area. Celada – who had studied with Ernesto Rogers- suggests developing the project along two lines: urban continuity and typological research.
Going against the contemporary flow, he decides to integrally keep the pre-existing façades because they form, together with the neighbouring ones, a clearly recognizable urban setting, built by the Milanese developer Carlo Bonomi at the beginning of 20th century.
Behind this literally thin historical layer, he focuses his daring typological tests. They are partly based on the housing experiments by British architects like the Smithsons and Stirling, which he admires, also because of the embedded social ambition. In order to guarantee the requested density without building an additional volume in the courtyard, he manipulates in an unprejudiced way the existing section to gain an extra floor. The ceiling height ranges from 2.40 m for the bathrooms to the original 3.40 m for living rooms and bedrooms of the new apartments: unconventional internal perspectives and an extreme spatial richness are generated.
Wide galleries, providing access to the private units, recall both the communitarian atmosphere of the Milanese «case di ringhiera» as well as the Smithson’s «streets in the air». The inhabitants naturally appropriate these generous extensions of their tiny apartments: here you can find pots with flowers in left-over corners, washing racks, benches and chairs, but also little statues of the Holy Virgin placed in the niches for the gas-meter next to the front door. The large inner courtyard is charged of almost ideological ambitions: designed as the sole access to the galleries, it is a single space with collective and commercial facilities which are organized on two different levels -a paved square and a roof garden. Despite its abandoned and worn-out character, the place still recalls the positive intentions connected to this type of architecture.
Celada’s project is not a masterpiece: some parts are even rather banal and others show the kind of deteriorated concrete architecture that has gained cult status on contemporary websites, But on closer inspection, this building does something else: it shows, in a nutshell, the schizophrenic complexities and challenging potentials of the modern city, where programs are pragmatically remixed, styles ceaselessly overlay and where apparently irreconcilable elements coexist behind a civic mask.

Here you can find the full article with photos (Harald Mooij) and plans (Ana Luisa Fonseca, Axel Beem, Davida Rauch, Carlyn Simoen)

COMPETITIONS AS BATTLEFIELD

For most architectural practices, competitions constitute one of the most common ways to try to get some work. In fact, the extremely low odds of victory – and, as a consequence, of paying back expended labour – and the even lower chances of building winning schemes, don’t seem to discourage the hundreds competing every day for the most ambitious or interesting briefs. Bolstered and trained by the rhythms and formats of university studio projects, young architects see competitions as unique opportunities to engage with complex programs and public clients that would otherwise remain inaccessible. Due to their tight temporality, competitions boost the production of architectural collective imagination. The imminence of deadlines releases inhibitions and favour a form of “automatic writing”, through which radical approaches and pragmatic and/or opportunistic tactics can be freely – and relatively quickly – experimented. However, the cutthroat selection of the proposals doesn’t always honour the most interesting or innovative ones. Yet the riskiest proposals – often misinterpreted, misunderstood or deliberately covered up by the jury – earn, on their own terms, the deserved prestige which was denied during the competition stage.
However, recent transformations in the cultural, professional and economic horizons have significantly altered any well-established pattern: the contemporary scenario is characterised by an increasingly accelerated circulation and consume of images, which is causing the progressive disappearance of magazines and the rise of new platforms where a new architectural collective imagination is created and shared; while the number of architectural practices increases exponentially and competition reaches a global scale, the cultural and technical relevance of the profession has been radically downsized; finally, the shrinking of direct commissions caused by the long financial crisis, together with the rise of more measured architectural approaches in terms of scale and costs, made a large number of architects redundant.
Such structural changes seem to question the viability of competition as a tool to bring together the – frequently diverging – priorities of designers, jurors, future users and potential clients. We invite the diverse group of participants to the Little Italy platform to contribute to this debate in the framework of the Unfolding Pavillion 2018.

Introduction
Enrico Forestieri, Matteo Pace, Pietro Pezzani

Imaginary Landscape
Arcipelago – Architettura Collettiva
Nina Bassoli / Editoriale Lotus
Domenica Bona / Divisare
False Mirror Office
Angelo Renna

Is Time Money?
Babau Bureau
Gosplan
Quinzii Terna Architecture
Riccardo M. Villa / Gizmo

The Myth of Quality
Carlana Mezzalira Pentimalli
Demogo
Studiospazio
Simone Tocchetti / SIA
Alberto Winterle / Turris Babel

Here you can find the full booklet.

Competitions as Battlefields / Concorsi: Campi di Battaglia
Curated and moderated by: Enrico Forestieri, Matteo Pace, Pietro Pezzani
Visuals and graphic layout: Ludovica Niero
Competitions as Battlefields was hosted by Unfolding Pavilion 2018 at Complesso di Gino Valle alla Giudecca, Calle Convertite / Ponte Lavraneri, Venezia which was curated by Daniel Tudor Munteanu, Davide Tommaso Ferrando, Sara Favargiotti

FIELD OPERATIONS

A continuous curved roof wrinkles the hilly countryside, signalling the position of the new school of L’Aquila. One hectare agricultural landscape, planted with Aquilan saffron, levitates between 6 and 15 metres above ground level. Under this “magic carpet” sits a new ground floor, which blurs the threshold between the surrounding landscape and the interior of the building.
The project intensifies, transforms and redistributes the latent energies of the territory.
The phyto-purification pond is the kingpin of the water management system: it collects wastewaters from the school and rainfalls channelled from the roof. Part of the purified water is used for agriculture, the rest is vaporised to cool the air.
Two inflatable wind turbines, hanging over the school, intercept the strong breezes of L’Aquila. Beside electric energy, they provide an “artificial cloud” that locally alters temperature and irradiation.
Architecture, landscape and technology interact and generate unexpected technonatural hybrids.

Enrico Forestieri, Matteo Pace
Collaborator: Claudia Storelli
International competition “La scuola che vorrei”
Kindergarden — 1.000 m², primary school — 3.500 m², secondary school — 2.500 m², auditorium — 500 m², landscape — 20.000 m²
Sassa, L’Aquila IT, 2018

SPECULATOR

A simple, seemingly compact volume is flooded by an ocean of air. This intangible solid moulds and hybridises both shared and private outdoor spaces; it increases solar radiation in the generous courtyard; it flows through a Party Deck and a Winter Garden; it activates beneficial cross ventilation throughout the whole estate. As seasons come and go, apartments change their perimeter by including terraces and loggias.
Seen from the outside, the metallic façade absorbs and fragments the surrounding landscape. Its shimmering reflections lend it an apparently infinite depth: thus, 50.000 m3 almost dematerialise, reduced to a mere visual distortion of the background.
Speculator is polysemous.

Enrico Forestieri, Matteo Pace
International competition “MilanoSesto”
Social housing — 12.500 m², retail space — 1.500 m², parking — 5.000 m²
Sesto San Giovanni, Milano IT, 2017

LITTLE QUESTIONS

Enrico Forestieri, Matteo Pace
in CSU – CLIP, STAMP, UPLOAD, Burrasca Press, 2017. pp. 106-109

A short reflection about contemporary fanzines vs old ones.

Assistiamo ormai da un decennio alla proliferazione di riviste indipendenti (little magazine) di architettura: un rinnovato interesse e una vitalità in decisa controtendenza rispetto allo stato comatoso del settore della costruzione. Un’attitudine maggiormente speculativa e riflessiva è tratto comune alle fasi recessive, come quelle attraversate negli anni Sessanta e Settanta . Ma questa pre-condizione, da sola, non basta a far luce sull’improvviso revival dei little magazine architettonici.
Il vigore di questa ripresa è anche legato a due importanti operazioni culturali di diversa rilevanza critica che, in modo distinto, sono riuscite a riaccendere i riflettori su fanzine e pubblicazioni radicali: Clip, Stamp, Fold: the Radical Architecture of Little Magazines 196X to 197X, promosso da Beatriz Colomina e Craig Buckley, e Archizines, ideato da Elias Redstone.
Il primo documenta e sistematizza il vasto ed eterogeneo panorama dell’editoria radicale tra gli anni Sessanta e Settanta. Evidenzia le influenze reciproche tra le diverse esperienze e propone acute chiavi interpretative di un fenomeno storico tanto eterogeneo e sfuggente. Questa ricerca, nata in ambito accademico (Princeton University), è stata ampiamente promossa a scala globale attraverso una serie di mostre e dibattiti (2006-2007) poi confluiti nel libro omonimo (2010) .
Elias Redstone intercetta questo fermento e nel 2011 propone con Archizines un archivio on line dei little magazine cartacei contemporanei; offre a tutti i selezionati la “consacrazione” archivistica in presa diretta e allo stesso tempo la pagina web funge da volano alle mostre itineranti realizzate negli anni successivi .
Ma in cosa differiscono le pubblicazioni odierne dalle precedenti esperienze? Hanno ancora la stessa rilevanza?

Here you can find the full article.

CUT & PASTE MILAN

Maria Feller, Enrico Forestieri, Marta Geroldi, Alessandro Rocca
in CSU – CLIP, STAMP, UPLOAD, Burrasca Press, 2017. pp. 96-103

Postproduction is an optimistic and unprejudiced practice. From Duchamp, artists have explored its creative implications in a conscious and deliberate way; they have conceived radically innovative forms and meanings from pre-existing objects, rituals and narrations, by imagining new connections among distant and apparently irreconcilable elements; they have focused on the linkages through which the works flow into each other, representing at once a product, a tool and a medium . This aptitude completely overturns any conventional design strategy; it allows us to envision new scenarios beyond our own prejudices and to imagine realities otherwise impossible to render.
During the workshop “Cut & Paste Milan: Experiments in Postproduction” (held at Politecnico di Milano from November 12th until November 19th 2016) each student has assembled a fanzine testing these techniques. Questioning the boundaries between originality, conceptual inventiveness and the culture of the copy, they have systematically reshuffled, recombined and hybridised more than 200 photos related to Milan to let emerge a brand new image of the city through these radical operations. This imaginative process does not follow a linear sequence, there is no gradual progression to reality, no realization of a pre-conceived plan, but vertiginous hesitation, tentative moves, mistakes, miscalculated gestures, fundamental meandering . This is a risky process which is constantly fed by doubt and uncertainty. It requires students a high level of introspection to be able to quickly interpret the potential opportunities that pop up during these manipulations.
Witty attitude, intuition and timing: these are the basic ingredients of the postproductive alchemy.

Here you can find the full article with some images (post)produced during the workshop

Cut & Paste Milan: experiments in postproduction is a workshop curated by Maria Feller, Enrico Forestieri, Marta Geroldi and Alessandro Rocca, held at Politecnico di Milano (November 2016) within the ATHENS PROGRAM framework.
Participants: Aleksandra Dutkowska, Michalina Dutkowska, Ania Juzak, Anna Semancova, Zuzanna Wodowska

CLIP, STAMP, STATEMENT

Enrico Forestieri, Matteo Pace, Pietro Pezzani
in CSU – CLIP, STAMP, UPLOAD, Burrasca Press, 2017, pp. 110-111

Here you can find the full article

DIORAMA

Dioramas are autonomous territories, spatial fragments foreign to their context. Once deployed, they react with the surroundings: they break the continuity of contiguous spaces, they short-circuit scales and features.
This “interior-diorama” is conceived to gain unexpected depth: an ascending timber screen alters the perspective, it compresses and expands the spatial sequence, it multiplies the display area visible through the narrow shop-window. Its folded structure highlights individual clothes while enabling a simultaneous view of the entire collection. In so doing, it triggers new combinations of accessories and dresses.
A big sliding mirror splits the boutique in two, enclosing a slightly raised fitting area beyond a small archway. Here, soft curtains reverberate light, while reflecting both in the dividing mirror and in the one contained in the changing rooms, therefore boundaries blur as if in a limbo.
A thirty square metres illusion.

Enrico Forestieri, Matteo Pace
Collaborator: Claudia Storelli
Schematic design
Fashion shop — 50 m²
Milan IT, 2017

L’AMBIZIONE DI PERDERE

Architectural projects are hypothetical futures: precarious assemblages made of blue foam, ink and coffee stains on paper.
During the nights when time is almost suspended, some configurations disappear immediately, while others persist and torment us: competitions feed on the very obsessions we nourish. Plumbing the depths of our unconscious, competitions distil visions that are simultaneously neat and blurred: they are psychoanalytical sessions which terminate, at least momentarily, with the hand-in…

Enrico Forestieri, Matteo Pace, Pietro Pezzani
Video editing: Arabella Kilmartin
Video presented during the seminar “Breaking Through / Competition Behaviorology” curated by Chiara Quinzii and Diego Terna (QTArchitecture)
Milano Arch Week 2017 – Triennale di Milano

POST SCRIPTUM: GENOVA

Enrico Forestieri
in FUOCO AMICO: COSTRUIRE PROGETTI, IL BLUEPRINT DI GENOVA, n.4, MMXII Press, 2017. pp. 269-273

Ormai da decenni, sul waterfront genovese si infrangono gli interessi dei principali attori della città: correnti impetuose e spesso contrastanti che però, come nel caso del recente concorso internazionale sull’area della Fiera, restituiscono paradossalmente uno scenario stagnante. Lungo l’intero arco del porto, il padiglione S è uno tra scogli più complessi, non solo in termini volumetrici, per la ridefinizione del carattere e della vocazione di tutta l’area.
Negli ultimi anni il calendario delle attività ospitate al suo interno si è progressivamente contratto di pari passo con le ambizioni della sua programmazione sportiva, culturale ed espositiva . La recente dichiarazione di inagibilità ne evidenzia lo stato di degrado materiale e ciò, associato alla sua crisi funzionale, ne sancisce il definitivo declino. Ma il concorso di idee non sembra interrogarsi più di tanto sulle possibili cause dell’attuale situazione e chiede ai progettisti di limitarsi a confermare e sostanzialmente mantenere il modello esistente – una formula quantomeno opinabile, tenuto conto degli sviluppi più recenti.

Here you can find the full article

NETWORKS

What is the role architecture plays in the construction of the societies? This is the clear and direct question that Andrés Jaque (and his practice “Office for Political Innovation”) persistently asks himself for more than a decade. His buildings, installations, performances, teaching activities and texts unveil unexpected links between different subjects and processes (FrayFoam Home, 12 Actions to Make Peter Eisenman Transparent, House in Never Neverland), invert the conventional processes that build the city via a “revolution from the couch of your living room” (Tupper Home), generate controversies and arguments about the management of both public and private spaces (Arquitectura Parlamento, Polémicas de Interiores, Sweet Home Gran via) and convert infrastructures into catalysts for new social rituals (Cosmo PS1). Through the analysis of these projects, we will highlight the theoretical bases of Jaque’s work (especially Bruno Latour and Michel Serres) and the strategies by which these are turned into architecture in a non-direct way.

Here you can find the full slideshow.

Presented by Enrico Forestieri at Newcastle University, Alternative Practice Theory APL 2001 (Prof. Andrew Law, Julia Heslop), 20170313.

ON SOPHISTICATION AND AMBIGUITY

Over the last 15 years, the multinational developer Hines has undertaken the redevelopment of the whole area of Porta Nuova, Milan, a massive area partially abandoned for decades. With his project, Hines aims at projecting Milan far beyond the national scale to become a city worthy of the world stage where marketing and urbanism merge together. Facing such a vast and complex operation, the Municipality of Milan has endorsed the project and this case study clearly shows the spatial repercussions of the disequilibrium stemming from public/private negotiations.
Within this redevelopment, Hines calls for Stefano Boeri to ‘legitimise’ the entire real estate operation and to tone down frictions with the citizens. His Bosco Verticale is a sophisticated and ambiguous operation where greenwashing, politics and architecture are inextricably intertwined.
This presentation tries to unveil the articulate and sometimes unexpected synergies between private investors and architects, and to provide critical instruments to interpret such phenomena.

Here you can find the slideshow.

Presented by Enrico Forestieri at Newcastle University, Alternative Practive Theory APL 2001 (Prof. Andrew Law, Julia Heslop), 20170306.

ALTERNATIVE REPORT FROM VENICE

Unlike the last retrospective and disciplinary focused Venice Biennale, curated by Rem Koolhaas, Reporting From The Front suggests instead to look at the future and society: it aims to redefine the role, the eventual usefulness and the tools of architects and architecture in the contemporary society; it tries to suggest an alternative agenda of priorities; it tempts to broaden the debate to a larger and not necessarily professional audience. During this session, we will evaluate how different national curators have contributed to the general topic, critically analysing their approaches and the relevance of their proposals. Plus, we will focus on the controversial figure of Alejandro Aravena and we will measure the distance between his ambitions and the outcomes of this “alternative biennale” and we will compare them with his professional, political and academic trajectory.

Here you can find the slideshow.

Presented by Enrico Forestieri at Newcastle University, Alternative Practice Theory APL 2001 (Prof. Andrew Law, Julia Heslop), 20170227.

MIRAGE

Over the last century, contingencies and variable priorities have shaped a heterogeneous compound where productive and residential spaces are indifferently overlaid. Some of them are still active, others have long been abandoned: architecture continuously overwrites the products of these unstable equilibriums. This double project prefigures a number of phases of an analogous process. It includes uncertainty as a design variable and operates in a pragmatic and opportunistic way: future mirages.

Enrico Forestieri, Matteo Pace
Feasibility study, schematic design
Workshops and office space — 500 m²
Milan IT, 2017

X,Y,Z: SPAZIO CRITICO

Seminar about architectural theory and criticism with Giovanni Corbellini, Davide Tommaso Ferrando, Gaetano Licata.

Curated by: Alessandro Rocca, Enrico Forestieri
Seminar hosted by Teorie e tecniche della progettazione architettonica course (Prof. Marco Bovati and Alessandro Rocca) at Politecnico di Milano, funded by DASTU.

ORSONERO COFFEE

Orsonero Specialty Coffee is the first Italian shop devoted to coffee gourmands. Here, the traditional features of Italian cafes and global influences -such as the so called “third wave” of coffee- are brought together. This creates a unique, simultaneously domestic and public atmosphere, which encourages an international clientele of coffee connoisseurs to hang out.
Orsonero is a small corner coffee bar near the Milanese district of Porta Venezia: thirty square metres and three big windows. During the day, natural light projects ever-changing shadows onto the furniture and the tilted partition wall. Shadows are also emphasised by the succession of 80×30 mm fir laths and 8 mm thick okumé plywood boards, which provide a strong chromatic contrast and underline the XIX century wooden joisted floor.
This was previously hidden behind a 3.10 m high plasterboard false ceiling. Sunlight is now free to flood the 4.20 m high, airy space from dawn to dusk and to virtually expand its volume. Customers can freely direct their gaze to the overlooking garden, thus blurring the perception of the spatial perimeter. The floor was treated with similar ambiguity: Geolite granular concrete, akin to asphalt, loosens the threshold between interior space and dehors.
Furniture is designed in order to encourage social interactions. The bar is lower than the Italian standard and there is no platform behind it. This choice reduces the visual impact of the bar and demarcates space without neatly subdividing it. Thus, the physical and psychological separation between the barista and his customers is overcome.
The atmosphere conveyed in this “expanded field” is the outcome of a creative reorganisation of its functions and a rigorous geometric control of the tiny available space. It is precisely this atmosphere that projects Orsonero Specialty Coffee into a global network largely exceeding its mere forty square metres of size.

Enrico Forestieri, Matteo Pace
Schematic design, design development, construction documents, bidding and construction administration
Cafeteria 40 m²
Milan IT, 2016-17
Published in Robert Schneider, Cafe Culture: For Lovers Of Coffee And Good Design, Images Publishing Dist Ac, 2019. pp. 176-179

A PRAGMATIC UTOPIA: IS·LAND

Enrico Forestieri
in BURRASCA: FIFTH WORLD, n.5, Burrasca Press, 2017. pp. 48-53

Utopia reloaded:
Visionary utopias of the Sixties and Seventies, fluctuating between idea(lism) and (mega)structures were blown away by the first oil crisis because of their reduced adaptability and scalability.
Since the Nineties, more urgent material constraints and important technological advances have influenced and driven a new series of pragmatic, opportunistic, impure projects. Such projects reject the previous naïf schematism and they are now able to manage complexity, different scales and multiple actors. Is·land aims at being there, in this middle earth.
From Environmental–Environmentalists Crisis to Post–Environmental Models
The Earth is a reduced space of negotiation. Up until recently, environmental problems did not patently assume conflicting characteristics because of the resources surplus and the reduced anthropic pressure. “Separate to protect” has so far been the environmentalists’ answer to the environmental crisis. During the last decades, the extent of protected areas has been growing exponentially, nevertheless, the environmental problem persists and worsens; this could be a sign that, once again, the “Indian reservation” strategy is not working properly.
Learning from migratory birds:
A natural park, though wide, still remains a zoo at the landscape scale, designed and tailored on sedentary animals. The insular strategy can only partially guarantee the potential qualities of the ecosystems because harmful volatile or soluble components simply cross legal constraints.
Migratory birds, with their use of the extended territories, stress clearly the limits of such a strategy, but at the same time, they unintentionally point out a model where habitats boundaries are less univocally defined and where intensity and duration of environmental pressure are linked to energetic parameters and to cyclic, temporal constraints.
Their cyclic nomadism represents a refined strategy of reversible management of territorial resources. This model is much more sophisticated than the sedentary one, where moving is the extrema ratio in case of end/lack of resources. In the current moment of environmental–ist crisis, could people reconsider their predominant sedentary condition in favour of a more fluid model? What can we learn from migratory birds?

Here you can find the full article.

THE GARDEN OF ACTIVE INGREDIENTS

Historically, medicinal gardens reflected a transcendental understanding of the cosmos. Being living archives of well-established knowledge, their architecture was the materialization of a precise political order, in which man and creation were given a stable position.
What kind of knowledge should be mobilised in a contemporary medicinal garden? What kind of political assembly should be articulated by its architecture?
The Garden of Active Ingredients is an attempt to provide an answer to these questions.
The garden is designed to establish a dialectic relationship with the complex of the new Bergamo hospital, of which it aims to represent an unofficial – and perhaps sightly thorny – en-plein-air pavilion.
Its introverted architecture hosts a parliament of humans and plants, where forms of co-existence between different curative practices – and the natures/cultures they mobilise – are represented, discussed and negotiated. A such, its vocation is not didactic, but strictly political: how can we find common rules through a better articulation of differences, instead of through their normative erasure?
The garden provides a real-time representation of techno-political controversies currently bonding humans and plants around the problem of healing. The different areas of the garden are organized around a series of overlapping criteria of classification.
The first of such criteria regards the legal status of each plant, vis a vis current EU protocols of authorization and commercialization. If the meaning of the term pharmakon denotes both medicament and poison, such criterion regards how the risks connected to the use of herbs – both in western/clinical and in so-called alternative or traditional medicines – are currently being managed.
A second criterion regards the process of production of drugs – be it herbal, semi-synthetic or synthetic – and its economic and ecological implications.
Finally, plants are positioned in different areas of the garden following a principle of cultural and geographical representation.
However, the borders of each area are to be considered as fluid, that is, subject to gradual transformation in time: this entails that well-known plants may be moved following changes in the legal framework, or depending on the emergence of new fashions and cultural hybridizations; in addition to that, new species may ask for representation as a consequence of unprecedented migratory fluxes and demographic transformations in the EU. Thus, differently from what happens in traditional medicinal gardens, the same species can be found in several different places around the garden, making visible shared genealogies and ongoing cross/pollinations between different traditions of cure.
The garden is surrounded by a walkway that provides access to three small buildings – three light pavilions loosely hosting different functions: a café/restaurant, a multifunctional hall (gym and auditorium) and a small office with a depot annexed.
The pavilions are light, modular constructions, adapted from standard industrial greenhouses modules, and they are therefore very cheap and quick to build.
Facilitating the discussion, divulgation, trade and consumption of herbal products, the three buildings work in synergy with the garden, disclosing its use to the patients of the hospital and to all the inhabitants of the city of Bergamo.

Enrico Forestieri, Matteo Pace, Pietro Pezzani
International competition promoted by Bergamo municipality
Garden — 10.000 m², pavilions — 300 m²
Bergamo IT, 2016

±0.00

What is a floor? How can we manipulate it? How can we design it?

Here you can find the slideshow

Presented by Enrico Forestieri, Matteo Pace at NABA, Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti, Metodologia di Progetto (Prof Librizzi-Italiano) – 1 MSc Interior Design, 20161108

LITTLE MAGAZINES

Little magazines, both printed and electronic ones, materialise instant thought. They suggest a highly personal, variable constellation of interests, doubts, starting points for future meditated debates. They are generally self-initiated and self-produced; so they deliberately set the degree of ambition of the editorial project. “Littleness” is a fragile condition: the “end of creative urgency” and the “production standardization” constantly conspire against their radicality and unstable equilibriums.
“Little Magazines” is a snapshot of the heterogeneous Italian panorama.

Participants:
Burrasca
Gong!
REM
RROARK!
Shht
Statement
STUDIO© Architecture and Urbanism magazine

Curated by: Enrico Forestieri
Seminar hosted by Teorie e tecniche della progettazione architettonica course (Prof. Marco Bovati and Alessandro Rocca) at Politecnico di Milano, funded by DASTU.

POST

Here you can find the slideshow

Presented by Enrico Forestieri as an introduction to the workshop Cut & Paste: Experiments in Postproduction: ATHENS Programme workshop (Maria Feller, Enrico Forestieri, Marta Geroldi with Prof. Alessandro Rocca) at Politecnico di Milano, 20161114-18

POSTPRODUCTION

A seminar about postproduction as an optimistic and unprejudiced creative practice.

Participants:
Enrico Forestieri – architect
Luigi Mandraccio – editor Burrasca
Davide Rapp – architect, videomaker
Alessandro Rocca – Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at Politecnico di Milano

Curated by: Enrico Forestieri
Seminar hosted by Teorie e tecniche della progettazione architettonica course (Prof. Marco Bovati and Alessandro Rocca) at Politecnico di Milano, and funded by Politecnico di Milano, DASTU

SUL FILO DEL RASOIO

Enrico Forestieri
on ISSUU, 2016

This text is an introduction to the controversial Milanese project site chosen for 2016 International Design Studio which involved ETSAM (Prof. Soriano, Urzáiz, Gil) and Politecnico di Milano (Prof. Rocca, Dalzero, Mattea).

Valentino Benati (1930) es arquitecto titulado por el Politécnico de Milán hace mas de cincuenta años. Se libera muy pronto del mantra de su mentor, el profesor Gino Pollini (1903-1930) del cual es ayudante en la Universidad para el que, “la arquitectura debe ser el resultado de una estrecha relación entre lógica y racionalidad” . A partir de ahí, decide emprender un camino autónomo, más “elástico”, capaz de responder hasta con oportunismo a las distintas oportunidades que Milán le ha ofrecido durante las últimas décadas. El metro cúbico se eleva a exponente de satisfacción y Benati, a pesar de algunos reveses, admite con sinceridad “haberlo pasado muy bien”. Desde la Rinascente –el equivalente del Corte Inglés– en la plaza del Duomo hasta los nuevos boxes del autódromo de Formula 1 de Monza, desde los bloques de oficinas en el la zona de Ripamonti hasta los recientes proyectos de residencias, oficinas y hotel dentro de la gran área de transformación Garibaldi-Porta Nuova-Isola, su pragmatismo contagia igualmente centro y periferia de la ciudad. Sin embargo, en la manzana De Castillia 23 este mecanismo se bloquea.

Here you can find the full booklet.

RISKY BUSINESS

Enrico Forestieri, Matteo Pace
in BURRASCA: GLITCH, n.3, Burrasca Press, 2015. pp. 26-31

Over the last fifteen years, far from equilibrium and the language “commonplaces”, the Spanish Teaching Unit directed by Federico Soriano and Pedro Urzáiz (ETSAM – Madrid) explores, constantly beyond the limits of short-circuit, the boundaries and qualities of the architectural wordscapes. Unprejudiced, postproductive procedures create apparently chaotic, multilayer plans where ambiguous and uncanny architectures emerge. Plus, they radically question its generative modalities. Students from Universities of different countries simultaneously join this inductive search: mistakes risen during the information interchange process and within the very same communication stimulate novel adaptive strategies.
Federico Soriano and Pedro Urzáiz act like skilled DJs, recollecting, remixing, manipulating and hybridising heterogeneous fragments of the reality. Their overflowing “tunes” ceaselessly re-invent the reality itself and form transient, momentary theories: deliberately uncoded “melodies” open to new interpretations.
Warning, these tracks may sound glitch!

Here you can find the interview with Federico Soriano and Pedro Urzáiz

TIRI DA TRE

Enrico Forestieri, Matteo Pace
in FUOCO AMICO: TEORIA, PROGETTO, AZIONE, n.3, MMXII Press, 2015. pp. 151-197

An interview with Federico Soriano and Pedro Urzáiz about their radical teaching methodology:

Il sodalizio tra Federico Soriano e Pedro Urzáiz risale a vent’anni fa quando iniziano a collaborare nell’Unidad Docente (unità didattica) di Iñaki Ábalos e Juan Herreros. Da più di dieci anni dirigono uno dei gruppi di progettazione più sperimentali della Etsam di Madrid.
Lontano da qualsiasi consolatorio stato di equilibrio, i procedimenti proposti nei loro corsi minano deliberatamente una supposta unità e linearità del progetto e, allo stesso tempo, flirtano con l’azzardo e l’errore per mettere a punto nuovi strumenti operativi, testare innovative modalità di collaborazione, esplorare nuove frontiere disciplinari: teoria e pratica si fondono indissolubilmente nel progetto, “il luogo estremo in cui raccontare in modo non ovvio situazioni convenzionali”.
Questo è il quadro articolato ma lucido che emerge dalla conversazione stimolante avuta con loro questa estate.

Here you can find the full article

LOST & FOUND

Jurjen Zeinstra, Enrico Forestieri
in MIAW 2014: REFORMING MILAN, Lettera Ventidue Publishing, 2015. pp. 28-45

In the urban fabric of a city, transformations are a normal and necessary condition. These transformations are most visibly expressed in the mixed variety of facades that surround the streets and squares of the city. Transformations will also take place behind the facades: in the buildings, the rooms and of course the lives of the people that live and work behind them. In the end, those continuous transformations, both the planned and the unplanned, are what defines the character of the city. Transformations are without a doubt connected to questions of politics and ideology, taking into account both complex and banal operations of real estate development and speculation. At the same time, this question is immediately related to the daily lives of the people, the way they organize their lives and in the way they try to make a living, in the broadest sense of the word. Transformations appear in all the different scales, from the regional to the very detailed scale of an entrance-door. They open our eyes to both the rich traditions and the many different and often forgotten experiments that the city, and especially Milan, has been confronted with in the last centuries. In preparing our contribution to the MIAW workshop Ri-formare Milan we have found such a ‘lost’ experiment: the perimeter block north of Corso Marzo XXII, between Via Calvi and Via Fiamma.
When you walk along Corso Marzo XXII, coming from the Madonnina that is overlooking the city, the regular rhythm of the quiet late 19th century facades is suddenly interrupted. At the corner with Via Calvi a 20th century brutalist concrete piece, just next to a prototypical Beruto building block, is drawing your attention. It’s clearly not one of the iconic post-war projects that have made Milanese architecture so famous and most people will simply dislike this expressive piece of late Modern architecture. When you come closer, passing the pharmacy, you will notice that this corner has a wide entrance to a courtyard. The moment you enter this space, something remarkable happens: suddenly you find yourself in the periphery of any European metropolis.

Here you can find the full article

DOLCE VITA AGRA

Enrico Forestieri, Matteo Pace
in GONG! MAGAZINE: MEDIOLANI / ROMAE, n.4, 2015

Roma e Milano: due città, due storie, due modi di vivere, due film: un’unica vita: dolce ed agra. Roma e Milano sono espressione di un’unica realtà soverchiante e ineluttabile da cui i protagonisti Marcello Rubini (Marcello Mastroianni) e Luciano Bianchi (Ugo Tognazzi) sono intimamente persuasi a non fuggire. Roma e Milano si sfiorano, separate esclusivamente da una sottile lastra di 500 Km: Roma è corpo, Milano è riflesso.

Click here to read the full article

LOST (BUT NOT LEAST)

Competitions are the privileged field for testing radical strategies, yet the cutthroat selection of the winners doesn’t always honour the most interesting or innovative design: Loos’s Chicago Tribune tower, the Smithsons’ Golden Lane estate, OMA’s La Villette Park are some examples of radical yet non-awarded projects from the recent past.
The riskiest proposals are often misinterpreted, misunderstood or deliberately covered up by juries. However, in some cases they subsequently earn, on their own terms, the deserved prestige and consideration that was denied at the competition stage.
Thus, they become in all respects part of the “imaginary landscape of architecture”: they circulate in time and space in the form of images and discourses, and their seeds flourish in a vast array of contexts.
Lost (But Not Least) invites architects, critics and curators to debate on the generative power of this immaterial landscape.

Participants:
Konstantinos Pantazis & Maria Anna Rentzou (Point Supreme) – Athens / Greece – 23 April 2015
Eduardo Arroyo (No.mad) – Madrid / Spain – 14 May 2015
Cristina Dìaz Moreno & Efrén Garcìa Grinda (Amid/Cero9) – Madrid / Spain – 21 May 2015
Laurent Gravier & Sara Martìn Camara (FRES Architectes) – Paris / France – 4 June 2015
Federico Soriano (Soriano y Asociados and ETSAM) – Madrid / Spain – 18 June 2015
Pecha Kucha Night (Controlzeta Architects, Fosbury Architecture, From Outer Space, Angelo Renna, PlaC, Studio Wok) – 18 June 2015

LOST (but not least)
Curated and moderated by: Enrico Forestieri, Matteo Pace, Pietro Pezzani
Series of talks funded and hosted by Fondazione Ordine degli Architetti, Pianificatori, Paesaggisti e Conservatori della Provincia di Milano

FUTURO PREGRESSO

Enrico Forestieri, Ludovica Niero, Gennaro Postiglione
in RE-CYCLE: OPPOSITIONS II, Aracne Edizioni, 2014. pp. 102-103

I tarocchi sono una macchina narrativa combinatoria, apparato di un laboratorio imperfetto che opera come editore contemporaneo di forme, idee e immagini, con cui tracciare scenari tematici di frammenti noti ma ricomponibili e riconfigurabili in un ordine sempre nuovo. Il significato di ogni singola carta dipende dalla posizione che essa ha nella successione di carte che la precedono e la seguono, provocando perciò squilibri nelle suggestioni narrative e influenzando eventi collettivi e particolari. Si tratta di una modalità di intervento sull’esistente dall’equilibrio debole, basata sulla raccolta temporanea e nomadica di materiali precari che definiscono come permanente il soggetto, ma in continua evoluzione la lettura del suo contenuto. Questa innovazione progettuale retroattiva compie operazioni di campionatura e manipolazione del mondo, tali da ricomporne la narrativa con logiche altre fino al punto di reinterpretare anche quelle che l’hanno preceduta.
In questo contesto operativo e metodologico, un qualsiasi manufatto non viene più considerato punto terminale del processo creativo, ma un sito di navigazione e negoziazione permanente, una postproduzione di forme fisiche e mentali esistenti. Le categorie di passato-presente-futuro ne vengono indebolite così come il loro legame di linearità e necessità, mettendo in discussione l’idea stessa di futuro come progresso inevitabile o necessario e mandando in frantumi la coppia oppositiva noto/innovativo tradizionalmente ad esso connessa.
Il ricorso ai tarocchi diventa l’unica ipotesi sostenibile in grado di generare una siffatta idea di futuro, essi scorrono in modo imprevedibile tra le dimensioni temporali, attingendo il loro significato da una dimensione atemporale, ambiguamente contestuale e responsive, e proiettando innumerevoli futuri deboli senza generare significati autonomi.

Here you can find the full article

SANTA ROSA

The “macchina” is a monument for the traditional Santa Rosa festival in Viterbo.
During the night of the festival, the “macchina” is transported through the city centre by 100 men.
We designed a 30-meter high “macchina”: a movable architecture that follows the proportions of historical tower-like examples from the past. It is composed of a sequence of six superposed structurally independent cylinders. Each cylinder is comprised of two horizontal slabs and a series of radial thin plate of cross-laminated timber. The rhythm, height and number of the pillars vary from cylinder to cylinder. The tower represents the Saint’s ascension to the sky. Following a well-established tradition of temporary architectures of luminaries, artificial light is chosen as the expressive device whose aim is to transform the “macchina” in a moving lantern.
Each cylinder refers to a different symbolic feature from the life and the iconography of the saint, and is characterised by a different, dynamic lighting technology. The light of the “macchina” interacts with the darkened architecture of the city in unpredictable, ever-changing and spectacular ways: like an itinerant luminescent cloud, it unleashes a glittering contrail that transforms the perception of the streets during the night of the festival.

Enrico Forestieri, From outer Space, Ludovica Niero, Matteo Pace, Pietro Pezzani
International competition promoted by Viterbo municipality
Macchina a spalla
Viterbo IT, 2013

IMPOSSIBLE OBJECTS

Enrico Forestieri
in FUOCO AMICO: LA BIENNALE SBAGLIATA, n.2, MMXII Press, 2015. pp. 160-168

Absorbing modernity si è rivelato un tema indigesto a molti curatori nazionali. L’apparentemente innocua richiesta di Rem Koolhaas di confrontarsi criticamente con il proprio recente passato nazionale ha messo in luce atteggiamenti spesso elusivi, o che tali potrebbero apparire, nell’ambito di una Biennale e delle sue modalità di fruizione. In questa edizione, il «fundamental-ismo» enciclopedico con cui sono spesso presentati archivi completi e collezioni pressoché infinite sembra una strategia funzionale a sospendere il giudizio sulla propria controversa e/o irrisolta eredità, e, allo stesso tempo, a ingaggiare con il visitatore un gioco sottilmente perverso basato sull’estasi visuale prodotta dai singoli, mirabili documenti unita all’impossibilità di poterli effettivamente consultare in maniera approfondita.
Il Padiglione Polacco (ideato dall’artista Jakub Woynarowski e curato da Dorota Jedruch, Marta Karpinska, Dorota Lesniak-Rychiak e Michael Wisniewski dell’Institute of Architecture di Cracovia) propone per converso una radicale sintesi.
Impossible Objects ricrea all’interno del Padiglione Polacco ai Giardini (Brenno del Giudice, 1932-1938) il coevo (1937) monumento di accesso alla cripta in cui è sepolto il controverso Maresciallo Josef Pilsudski, «eroe delle lotte per l’indipendenza Polacca (1914-1918), ma allo stesso tempo a capo del golpe militare (1926) che ha rafforzato le tendenze autoritarie polacche nel periodo interbellico».

Here you can find the full article

Photo: Enrico Forestieri (Pilsudski tomb, Krakow), Wojciech Wilczyk (Polish Pavilion, Venice Biennale)
Thanks to: Jakub Woynarowski

PENTHOUSE FOR A COMPOSER

In this penthouse for a composer, domestic atmospheres and public vocation (concerts, performances, etc.) are intermingled, their balance is dynamic and it can be easily readjusted by moving a curtain and/or rotating a pivot door.
This apartment is located in a block from the 30s in piazza Gorini, within the Milanese area of Città Studi, and is lighted by big windows that stand out against the surrounding buildings and open views towards the city centre’s skyline.
A field delimited only by thick perimetral walls, following the trajectory of the sun during the entire day: a sundial-house.
Existing partition walls are replaced by a piece of new fixed furniture, which defines the perimeter around which public activities are gathered and private ones are concealed. Such furniture is made of a 5 cm thick balloon frame finished with okumé plywood boards.
Planar pivot hinged doors open seemingly homogeneous surfaces, re-configuring internal space, their mutual relations and the quality of light inside the different rooms.
On the big “parquet carpets” living room, facing the sun form midday till sunset, the wooden structure interacts with a mobile curtain: a sort of moiré filter, capable of refracting light, reduce reverberation, evoking another ghost-room.
Two seemingly “alien” objects, that are put in touch with pre-existing elements without any mimic effort. Characterized by a few different materials, they complete each other by synchronizing the diverse uses of spaces with the passage of the sun as well as the owner’s mutable character.

Enrico Forestieri, Matteo Pace
Schematic design, design development, construction documents, bidding and construction administration
Private apartment and concert space — 130 m²
Milan IT, 2014
Published in YOUBuild. Gabriele Tavasci, Nuovi Spazi in Concerto – Attico in Piazza Gorini, 2018. pp. 128-133

RE-CALL: 100 GRAM CYCLE

Enrico Forestieri, Julia Heslop, Sophie Anderton
in RE-CALL: BEYOND MEMORIALISATION. DESIGN FOR CONFLICT HERITAGE, Recall Consortium, 2014. pp. 194-203

Here you can find the full article

GARIBALDI ISOLA CIVIC CENTRE

Garibaldi-Isola Civic Centre is a shimmering building that projects the surrounding park in its interior while filtering and altering the perception of it.
The building occupies the site in its entirety, going beyond any distinction between interior and exterior space: it circumscribes a volume of air, modifying its parameters in order to generate a state of contemplative pleasure typical of park pavilions.
A solid three-storeys volume, opaque towards the North and completely glazed towards the South, slopes progressively, creating ample terraces and providing a simple yet generous response to the brief.
A semi-transparent, dichroic filter works like a screen that virtually encloses an open-air volume. This screen produces a favourable micro-climate and a condition of protected continuity with the park: it creates an en plein air salon in which objects and activities can informally flow.
A series of continuous balconies run behind this holographic screen: by providing a new perspective on the park and on the exceptional skyline of Garibaldi Repubblica, they generate a public space with unique qualities, offered to the spontaneous, informal and creative appropriation of citizens.

Enrico Forestieri, Matteo Pace, Pietro Pezzani
International competition promoted by Milan municipality
Civic centre — 800 m², landscape — 1.000 m²
Milan IT, 2014

100 GRAM CYCLE

On 7th April 1944 in the Ostiense neighbourhood of Rome, an attack was carried out on the Tesei bakery by a group of women. As a result, ten women were led onto the parapet of the nearby bridge – the Ponte dell’Industria – and shot by the SS. This attack was a spontaneous and unorganised assault, driven by pure desperation and hunger, coerced by the rationing of bread to only 100 grams per family, per day. An instance of unprompted civil resistance, this event led to further attacks on bread ovens throughout the city.
Within this story, there is a key material element which we have made the focus of our proposal: bread. The potency of the 100 gram piece of bread as a ration is a powerful one and we have explored the use of bread throughout Italian history as an influential social and political tool; one of rhetoric and propaganda.
Ostiense is now a post-industrial landscape and the site of a stop-start regeneration process. A cultural area – the Gasometro – lies alongside the River Tevere and provides entertainment throughout the summer months. We propose to use part of the Gasometro, next to the Ponte dell’Industria, to build a wheatfield. Five local schools will sow, nurture and harvest the wheat in collaboration with agricultural organisations. When the wheat is harvested the school children will bake it into 100 gram pieces of bread, replicating the rations given to families during the war. The bread will be disseminated at two feasting events – a harvesting festival and a celebration on 7th April to commemorate the massacre. As a permanent, cyclical process, the field will be renewed annually, reinvigorating the memory each year. This process enables the local community to take possession of their difficult heritage and the memorialisation of it. Furthermore, the activities of the community in nurturing the wheatfield reinforce the notion of civil action in an everyday manner, which is so integral to our story, whilst the involvement of children will create an innovative space of shared learning and memorialisation which is relatable for a new generation.

Here you can find the four presentatio n boards of the project.

Enrico Forestieri, Julia Heslop, Sophie Anderton
International competition RE-Call: awarded Second Prize
Permanent art installation — 1.000 m²
Rome IT, 2014
Exhibited at the Nordic Embassy, Berlin, Falstad Memorial Center (Norway), M4gastatelier (Netherlands)
Published in RE-Call: European conflict archaeological landscape reappropriation, Recall Consortium, 2014. pp.194-203
REcall is a research project founded by EC Culture 2007-13 Programme (n. 2012 -0927 / 001 – 001 CU7 COOP7) focused on the possible roles Museography can play when dealing with Difficult Heritage such as the ones coming from conflicts and wars. REcall wishes to envision new ways to the handling of Painful Places & Stories going behind any traditional approach: there is the need to shift from the ‘simply’ commemoration attitude to a more active involvement and participation of people in/with Places & Stories, through design strategies of ‘reappropriation’.
Thanks to: Afonso Sanches, Isabel Lima and Toby Phips Lloyd.

ON CLOUD NINE

A lecture about atmospheres, their aesthetics and statics.

L’interesse teorico e professionale per le atmosfere come ambito e materiale architettonici vanta una lunga tradizione di sperimentazioni che hanno costantemente messo in discussione e ridefinito lo statuto delle atmosfere stesse e le loro proprietà.
Affrancati dai precetti del Moderno tanto nelle sue accezioni lirico-poetiche come in quelle funzionaliste (1), possiamo riconsiderare questo “filone atmosferico” e le sue ricadute sullo spazio architettonico da una prospettiva disincantata.
I progetti di serre ottocentesche di Loudon, il brevetto di Frederick William Lanchester (1918) per il sostentamento di ospedali da campo esclusivamente mediante aria, i successi e fallimenti degli Zeppelin, ecc aprono la strada a una serie di proposte post-belliche in bilico tra pragmatismo e utopia (da Cloud n6 di Buckminster Fuller e Shiji Sadao fino a City in Antartica di Ove Arup, Frei Otto e Kenzo Tange), fino a indagare recentemente condizioni di contorno più sfumate o interazioni più complesse che rendono possibili nuove forme di socialità o ridiscutono la relazione e i limiti tra ambito privato e pubblico (Instant City di José Miguel de Prada Poole, Blur Project di Diller e Scofidio, Suitaloon de Michael Webb, Hormonalweb-i.weather.org di Gilles Décosterd e Philippe Rahm).
L’atmosfera è per sua natura estensiva e pervasiva.
Non è un’aura, una nebbiolina che promana dal fondo (cioè dall’oggetto della percezione) e che, pur colmando la “distanza” tra soggetto e oggetto, ne mantiene invariata la relazione.
É proprio la saturazione del campo tra soggetto e oggetto che invalida (o comunque debilita fortemente) questo tipo di relazione dialettica in favore di una fluidità/ambiguità maggiore tra le parti. Potremmo stabilire che non esistono soggetto e oggetto ma solo una situazione all’interno della quale gli elementi partecipano in ugual misura (2).
In questo contesto, l’introduzione del concetto di atmosfera annulla la distanza, permette e stimola continui rovesciamenti percettivi che perturbano l’intorno (l’atmosfera stessa) e ne sono a loro volta influenzati.
L’atmosfera non è un ambiente neutro.
Non è solo un mediatore tra parti di un sistema instabile, ma è un elemento che può essere attivato/manipolato all’interno dei sistemi ambientali (come ad esempio nei processi di dissipazione, captazione e consumo di energia) per indurre in modo deliberato cambiamenti nella relazione tra gli elementi.
Il risultato è una tecnologia ambientale appena visibile, sistemi tecnici che inducono effetti spaziali, ambientali e visuali, e che spostano l’interesse dall‘oggetto a ciò che si ottiene: cioè all’effetto… Sarebbe quindi possibile lavorare con le intensità degli stimoli, con gli stati alterati e differenti livelli di percezioni. Tutto a scale diverse, da quella microscopica a quella del paesaggio (3).

(1) …nos permiten ensayar un proyecto de futuro en el que sea posible recuperar el espacio como campo de trabajo para la arquitectura contemporánea, desprendido ya de toda connotación conservadora y superando de una vez por todas la homogeneización e isotropía espaciales del movimiento moderno.
Cristina Díaz Moreno, Efrén García Grinda: Formas de aire 1.0. pag.7- Obradoiro n.32 – Dec2006
(2) Olafur Eliasson: Tu Utopía. pag 101- in Breathable – 2009
(3) Cristina Díaz Moreno, Efrén García Grinda: Atmosfera: Material del jardinero digital. pag 25 – in Breathable – 2009

Here you can find the slideshow

Presented by Enrico Forestieri, at Politecnico di Milano, Master Thesis Design Studio (Prof. Biamonti, Galli, Poli, Telli), 2 MsC Interior Design, 20121106. A new, expanded version was presented at NABA, Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti, Interior Architecture Design Studio (Prof Librizzi-Cassani)

MATERIAL CONTEXTS

The architectural operative and critical scenario is currently witnessing the emergence of “realist” positions, that show a renovated interest in context considered as mere materiality.
This line of action/research is frequently characterized by preservative approaches and practices, yet it doesn’t necessarily share the same premises and ends of traditional disciplines of preservation and restoration.
New strategies emerge, that incorporate the metamorphic and decaying aspect of architectural materiality; the spatial, perceptual and typological potentialities of building re-use are explored; the economical and energetical repercussions of material cycles are investigated; the city is interpreted as a mineral ecosystem in constant transformation.

Participants:
Maarten Gielen (ROTOR) – Brussels / Belgium – 24 October 2013
Samantha Hardingham (AA) – London / UK – 28 November 2013
Gian Maria Tosatti – Roma / Italy – 19 December 2013
David Gissen (CALIFORNIAN CENTRE OF ARTS) – San Francisco / USA – 9 January 2014
Adam Lowe (FACTUM ARTE) – Madrid / Spain – 14 October 2014
Teresa Stoppani (LEEDS BECKETT UNIVERSITY) – Leeds / UK – 14 October 2014

Material Contexts
Curated and moderated by: Enrico Forestieri, Matteo Pace, Pietro Pezzani
Cycle of conferences funded and hosted by Politecnico di Milano, DASTU, MI-Arch
Thanks to: Prof. Gennaro Postiglione, Prof. Stefano Boeri

PARALLEL CONVERGENCES

Seeking a balance between optimism and realism, Parallel Convergences accepts and tries to enhance the present isolated nature and commercial vocation of the Kagran/Stadlau site.
The combined effect of the highway and the railway borders is simply too strong to leave room for any dream of spatial continuity between this cut-out site and its disperse, incoherent surroundings.
Nevertheless, the construction of the new tramway line could provide strength to an emerging system made of isolated yet relevant episodes connected by a linear, moving infrastructure.
In this framework, Parallel Convergences provides a strategy aimed at gradually converting the present mono-functional Geweberparks into a lively mixed-use district, capable of attracting people from both the outskirts and the city centre.
A commercial podium protects ground level from noise and pollution, providing an elevated soil equipped with public facilities, directly connected with the level of the tramway line. Logistic and vehicular circulations are moved to the borders, while the core of the site is occupied by a linear park that remediates the contaminated area placed North. Housing blocks lay on the basement creating wide semi-public courts that occasionally invade the space of the park. On the south vertex, a public building provides car access and multi-story parking, a multiplex cinema and sport/wellness facilities.
The whole system offers an exciting and introverted mix of residence, commercial and leisure activities, superimposing it with the climatic, visual and perceptive qualities of a real, totally car-free park.
Parallel Convergences seeks delight in intensity and superimposition.

Enrico Forestieri, Matteo Pace, Pietro Pezzani
International competition Europan 12
Strategic plan — 400.000 m² and mixed use (social housing, retail space, logistic hub, public facilities, landscape) pilot project — 40.000 m²
Kagran, Vienna AT, 2014

AROUND ROBIN HOOD GARDENS

A series of lectures about British architects Alison and Peter Smithson’s legacy and relevance.

Participants:
Alan Powers – Twentieth Century Society – 22 March 2013
Max Risselada – TU Delft – 9 April 2013
Jonathan Sergison – Sergison Bates architects – 17 April 2013
Irénée Scalbert – School of Architecture Limerick – 14 May 2013
Carles Muro – ETSAB – 21 May 2013
Dirk van den Heuvel – TU Delft – 28 May 2013

Here you can find the audio recordings

Around Robin Hood Gardens
Curated and moderated by: Michela Bassanelli, Enrico Forestieri
Cycle of conferences funded and hosted by Politecnico di Milano
Thanks to: Prof. Gennaro Postiglione

EDEN

Far from the Arcadian canon, the countryside in between Milan and Pavia is a varied, functional patchwork (agriculture, workshops, housing, etc.) crisscrossed by mobility infrastructures.
Rather than aiming at a lost ideal, Eden concentrates and organises on a single plot, the peculiar and contradictory features of the Lumbard landscape.
A canopy marks the limits of the site without denying both physical and visual relationship with the surroundings; within this field, all the functions (houses, a garden, spaces for collective activities, sports areas, parking) are arranged in strips until complete saturation of the plot. People can enjoy the single activity spaces in a conventional way or may take advantage of the unexpected, hybrid landscapes generated by the functional, spatial proximity.
In an analogous way, the housing slab organises the diverse inhabitants and their needs within a three-dimensional modular grid of CLT walls and floors: in spite of its simplicity, this structural system provides unforeseen typological flexibility as well as the possibility to easily reconfigure the dwelling and outdoor spaces.
Present and future of the Lumbard countryside.

Binocle, Enrico Forestieri, Pietro Pezzani
International competition promoted by Pavia municipality
Social housing — 2.000 m², collective spaces — 400 m², landscape — 2.000 m²
Casorate Primo, Pavia IT, 2012

STATEMENT

Statement is a by-product of the internet.
In a time in which having a website has become the sufficient condition to take part in the architectural scene, architects have to converge all their efforts in their presentation in order to stand out from the crowd. As architectural practices face the necessity of presenting themselves to the world in a few lines, a new literary genre is rising: the statement.
Statements work like levelling agents: regardless of the dimension of the practice, fame or visibility in the world of printed publications, very few escape from the temptation of the statement. If the eyes are the mirror of the soul, statements are the mirror of today’s discourse on the discipline of architecture: they are keys to understanding the most popular topics, terms and registers in the field.
Every office wants to present itself in the most synthetic way, but the vast majority takes advantage of the occasion to say something about the meaning of architecture- and the meaning of life.
Some try to be funny, some are brutal. Some shamelessly show off their attributes, some opt for under-statement. Some start by stating that statements are no longer possible, then they write the last possible statement. Some write in verses, some in prose. Some of them are as dry as business cards, some others try to be touching.
Do you smile when you shake somebody’s hand for the first time? Are you professional or sustainable? Do you care for natural light?

More information about Statement.

Enrico Forestieri, Matteo Pace, Pietro Pezzani
International competition promoted by Milan municipality
Civic centre — 800 m², landscape — 1.00 m²
Milan IT, 2011 — 2016
Published in CSU – CLIP, STAMP, UPLOAD, Burrasca Press, 2017. pp. 110-111

IS·LAND

Is·land is a research on forms of cohabitation and land management in vulnerable areas.
In the Wadden Sea Region (WSR), a 1 million hectares Natural Park between the Netherlands and Denmark, (a geographical and functional spot for migrating bird s, a hyper protected area and a region with evident socio-economic imbalances), Is·Land suggests a postenvironmental (Branzi, 2010) scenario of cohabitation with humans and socialized non-humans (Latour, 1993), based on the constant negotiation of Spaces, Time, Cycles.
Is·land questions the prevailing sedentary attitude of humans, looking at birds cyclic nomadism as a smart strategy of managing natural resources. Beyond actual ecotouristic segregated model, it rethinks WSR as a thick and porous “Mixing Chamber” and suggests Is·land moving platform as the infrastructure able to support positive forms of interactions and virtuous circles between migrating birds and a heterogeneous nomadic community.
Is·land is a transient, functional landscape. It operates in the WSR everchanging tidal area, generating a brand new hybrid context for human and non-human cohabitation. It’s a middle earth suspended between landscape and domestic scale; its semi-submerged portion and its slow movement blur its visual presence as if it were an unstable mirage, a supplementary island of the Friesland archipelago. Is·land’s movement responds to and takes advantage of local conditions (as the reduced wave motion behind Friesland Islands) and cyclical contingencies (such as tidal streams).
It’s not intended as a self-sufficient monad: it enhances and strengthens relationships between regional scattered communities (5 million people along 500 Km of coastline) and it establishes a tight interdependence (a social, economical and environmental one) between the territory and itself. Every time it lands, it receives material and energetic inputs from the territory in exchange of material and intangible products developed in its interiors. Is·land accepts agricultural-food products planted in selected areas within the “Mixing Chamber” ribbon, recharges its batteries thanks to Magenn rotors network; in return, it converts itself in an Instant City for each of the guest communities.
Is·land is a marina, a mobile market, an exhibition space, a conference room, a workshop centre, a regional-bio delicatessen shop, a restaurant, a love boat, …
Is·land is a pragmatic utopia.

Here you can find a project booklet

Enrico Forestieri
Collaborators: Pilar Díez, Helena Muñiz, María Martínez, Chiara Novello, Pietro Pezzani
Research, strategic plan — 1.000.000 ha, mobile infrastructure — 60.000 m²
Wadden Sea Region NL-DE-DK, 2011
Published in BURRASCA: FIFTH WORLD, n.5, Burrasca Press, 2017. pp. 48-53

ALQUIMIA

This debate explores the potential links between innovative architectural spaces and material/immaterial production.

Participants:
Carlos Arroyo
Lorenzo Bini
Josemaría Churtichaga – Cayetana de la Quadra-Salcedo
Pilar Díez – Enrico Forestieri
Carlos Fernández – Quino Monje
Marco Lampugnani
Maria Langarita – Victor Navarro
Chiara Novello
Key Portilla Kawamura – Ali Ganjavian

Curated by: Pilar Díez, Enrico Forestieri
Seminar hosted by Studio Banana, Madrid

BIPOLARCH

Architectural critique ups and downs.
Here you can find the link to the website

Enrico Forestieri, Pilar Diéz
Madrid, ES and Milan IT, 2011 — 2018
Cover image: Gena Rowlands in GLORIA, 1980, dir. John Cassavetes

Enrico Forestieri studio@enricoforestieri.com Via Carlo Forlanini, 27 20133 Milano (IT)

Enrico Forestieri
studio@enricoforestieri.com
Via Carlo Forlanini, 27
20133 Milano (IT)