 All right, good evening. Can you all hear me? I'm a little bit losing my voice. Sorry. So welcome back from spring break. I hope you guys had a good break. I'm going to introduce tonight's guest lecturers. And so it's a pleasure for me to welcome tonight Pio Venefabe to GSAP. And it's their first time lecturing at the school and the first time also lecturing in New York and the US. So I'm very thrilled to be able to present them tonight and participate in our discussion at the end. So Pio Venefabe was founded in 2013 in Milan and is currently there working between Milan and Brussels. And it's led by Ambrah Fabe and Giovanni Pio Vene. It's an architectural office that works in national and international contexts and is active in the field of architecture, urban research, sorry, urban research, territorial visions, and design. The office activity develops through commissions, competitions, publications, workshops, and teaching. I think in the context of us being in our school environment, I think many of the themes that they're working on in their office resonate well with the core curriculum in the MRC program as well as in the advanced studios. So I'm very excited tonight to see them present the work through their lecture and images. I think it's also important to note that they both teach and have taught for some time and are currently teaching at the Ecole d'Architecture et de la Ville et des Territories à Marne-la-Vallée in France. Ambrah Fabe graduated from architecture in Medrizo. She has also worked as art director and project leader at the Office of Peter Zimthor and partners Giovanni Pio Vene studied at the Universitat IUAV in Venice and also in France. And has the co-founder and editor of the architecture magazine San Rococo. And I was very happy today to have them in my seminar. So thank you for coming and presenting the work both of the books as well as the exhibition at the AA. So it's just been a delight for me. I have been following their work for a few years. And so from seeing the kind of wonderful exhibition of the San Rococo Book of Copies as it was installed in the installation at the AA, a kind of very beautiful black yet playful framework, a book stand for the copies to seeing their work in Fabrizio Galantes, The World in Our Eyes. More recently, something I'm looking forward to hearing them speak about is more a prefab housing typology. And then in November, seeing at the Chicago Biennial their installation, looking at the Milan subway through a kind of invention of new furniture, beautifully, richly, just exquisite pieces that were among my favorite things that I saw there and some of the things that stuck with me the most from the entire show. I have to say I really enjoyed seeing the work. They make things look playful, yet elegant, sophisticated, and all done with, I think, a very palpable, refined sense of a concern for making things real. So I think it's exciting and stimulating and I think makes a very careful claim and stake position on what is of value today, not only in architecture, but across all design things from environments to furnitures and to cities. In addition, I think what's important to note about what they're doing, not only in their office, but through teaching, they're part of a larger teaching group at their university, which will co-curate the next Lisbon Architecture Triennial in 2019. So please welcome Pio Venefabe. So thank you very much, Hilary, for the nice words you had for our work, of appreciation. And thank you very much to the Columbia GESAP for having us here. I mean, for us, it's a great honor to present our work, the work of a pretty small office in such a context, which is, I mean, quite important for us. So this is the title of our lecture today, of object, of architecture. And we'd like to start with this image, which is not made by us. It's an image by Ettore Sozzas done in 1976, which has a funny title, which is, Not Everybody Can Design Their Life as a Fist. And for us, as a starting point of our lecture, this image represents a possible definition of what architecture could be, at least for us, in this moment, what we are interested in today. And if we look at the picture, it's not forcefully, I mean, architecture, it's not forcefully a roof. It's made here of four poles which define a field, so a perimeter. So this flags as a sort of necessary ornament of architecture. And finally, the bread and the wine on the lower part of the image, which is somehow the life which animates architecture. So regardless the scales of the project we're going to show you tonight, we think that we can find almost in every project this series of principles, characteristics. So maybe we start then with the first project, which is a project about temporary architecture for a festival. So OK. It was a project which was built, now maybe let's start first with that. It's a temporary pavilion in this image of Canaletto. Here, for instance, you see an image in which a temporary pavilion is done with very few elements, some poles, a roof. This is the San Rocco festivity, which happens in Venice. Here these very few elements define an extension of the church just with very few things. Here, this image of Michael Bartamely Oliver. It's an image of the 18th century in which a prince, the prince, the Conti, make a party for another prince, Charles Guillaume Ferdinand. And it's really just a space for a temporary space for a feast, just a very simple element. So somehow we got selected for this festival, a festival organized in Brussels in the context, organized by an institution, a public institution which takes care of parks and environment, which made every two years a festival dedicated to the parks. So this is the edition of 2016 in which the curators organized the old festival around the essential garden. This was the first proposal we did for the festival. This site was the main pavilion of the festival, which was hosting, at the same time, a space for a scene, which is the square piece, a distillery, which was somehow the core, and also the landmark of the festival, which was also the place where all the activities were organized and a café. And these three objects, somehow separated, they were kept together by a perimeter. So gradually we got selected, also together with a collective from London, the decorators. We got selected and the project had to reduce to its essence, to its minimal, because of budget reason. And at the end, that's the result. In a way, a square perimeter, which is at the same time an outside space and the inside space where all the activities can happen and then surrounding it three minimal objects, three furnitures, which are spaces where you can almost not get in. And the decorators designed pieces, as you can see here, these objects, they can open and they can scatter around pieces of the furnitures, which then populate the space for different activities. The roof can open and close. So in the night, that would become also the screen for the light to come. So this is the distillation tower, which is a bit of an ambiguous object. It's on one side a landmark, which is visible from very far away. So then the distillery, really like a chemical laboratory where everything around the festival happens. And then it's also the support for the lamp. These objects closes in the night, and it becomes totally white, and when it opens, it reveals the color. And the same is for the other objects. So then here you see the relationship with the essential garden that was created in front of the pavilion, which then was nourishing as a primary material the festival itself. So during the festival, really, a lot of things were happening like essential plant courses about how to cultivate them, how to use them, how to distillate them. The roof could open and close according to the weather condition, kitchen courses and classes. And at the end, this pavilion was, in a way, a very small action in this park. But in a way, the neighborhood discovered this place, which was, in a way, always there. But because of that, it took another life. So then now to go on with that, this festival was very successful. The institution was very happy. Then they asked us to take this pavilion as a prototype and to make five kiosks in five parks in Brussels. You were of course very happy, but the program was somehow very a bit different. It was not any more this festival with these cultural activities, but it was really a kiosk. And so we had to reduce it even more to the core of it. At the end, we created a family of pavilions, which took the principles and also the construction of the previous one. And these pavilions, so in a way, the perimeter, the canopy, the kiosk. And then with a few set of rules, we made the differences. So these rules are the way the roof changed dimension to adapt to the site, the orientation of course in the site, and then the color. So the structure is always, the metal structure is always painted in one different color and also the interior of the kiosk. And the outside is white, kind of white, exactly the same white of the fabric. So there are always just two colors. Here is the replacement of the pavilion which was done for the festival. So you see it's much more simple. But in a way, we were very happy about it because we could really arrive to the essence of it. So we reduced, reduced, reduced until the moment everything which was necessary stayed. So the yellow one was inscribing in a more urban environment and much more popular one. So it was also interesting to see how the different pavilions were used from different people and in different moments of the day. This one, for instance, was always used for lunch. This one very much for the evening. So in a way, to go more in detail into that, the elements are just this roof with this perimeter. The roof is this white fabric, very simple just to protect from the rain. It has few features in the sense that as a white element, it looks really like a cutout. So it really cut out the landscape from the inside. It really becomes like a view. And at the same time, while being a fabric, it's very much alive. So it really reacts to the weather conditions, which is also very nice. Then there is the kiosk. The kiosk is an interpretation of the former one in a way that had to become more, for obvious reason, more stable because it has to be dismantled every year, but also to be built in very little time. So it's really done with these panels, which are just attached to a very thin metal structure. And these panels are framed with a metal frame, which then define the drawing of the pavilion. When it's closed, it looks all the same. And then, as you see here, the pavilion opens on one side, and the bark comes out. So you see it here in the blue pavilion. It really changed a lot. The fact that there is this intense color on one side, it really gives something else, which it really makes the difference from when it opened to when it closed. And inside every single object, even the sausage is colored in the same color here you see. Also, these both details, the roof was really manually done, very much low tech, so that to open it and close it, you would need a few people on one side and few on the other. And these cables would be the way to move it. So the back of the pavilion. But here you see also, so there is the roof, there is the canopy, the kiosk. And then there are a few little features, objects which populate the space. Here, the lamp as a landscape, which substitute as a landmark, which substitute the tower of the previous festival pavilion. And then the tables, chairs, other lamps, movable lamp, which can be used for other sort of activities. Which is also in a strange way the same color of the fabric and also makes this strange feeling of cut out of the landscape. So we show here another project, which is the project with which Hillary was talking about before. So a project we have been chosen for this Chicago Biennial 2017, which was curated by Mark Lee and Sharon Johnston, whose title was Make New History. So somehow this is a project we had in mind since a bit. We never had the occasion to develop it. And we found it perfectly fitting the theme of the Biennial. So maybe we can discuss afterwards also why. So our project starts from this. So this is the map of the first liner of the metro in Milano, so the subway in Milano, which opened in 1964. It's the first subway which opens in Italy and which opens in the most metropolitan city in Italy. Of course, we are not comparing it with other metropolitan cities, we know well. But at the time Milano was extremely metropolitan and was ready to accept this project. So this is somehow an image of the project and the project has been assigned by the municipality to the Albini-Helg office, which worked together with the Dutch graphic designer, which is called Bob Nord. So the project, and maybe we can see it better here, is the project of, let's say, is almost, we could say in today, in a moment in which we like to divide the disciplines, a project of interiors. Because the architecture of the infrastructure, let's say, was already existing. So it was an infrastructure which was ready to be dressed with the project of which could carry all the information of the metro. So in this image it's quite clear, because you see all the infrastructural part and you see that the Albini intervention is just this blue dress with this green line on top. And the green line is the carrier of information. This project had a big success, the project of the Milano metro. Because Bob Nord as a designer was then asked to design the metro of Sao Paulo in Brazil. And you can see that despite more Brazilian colors and patterns, the project is quite similar. And to add another little step to this, Bob Nord together with Massimo Vignelli founded the Unimark International Office. And the reason why then Unimark Office was asked by the MTA to design the metro map of New York was because of this Bob Nord work. So if you look it carefully, you see many assonance among this project, so the project of the metro you take every day and the initial metro of Milano. So for us, that project, the Milano one, is extremely important. And so to give you a little bit more context very fast, this moment in Milano, this moment in Italy, was extremely rich for architects. Because companies like, for example, this company, Olivetti, were asking designers, which are mainly, they were all architects. Because we're talking about Vignelli, it was architect. Sotsas was at an architectural education. All of them were architects because it came indeed before separation of careers, which we are really fun today. So companies like these were really working with the designer to develop products like this one in 68, the Valentina product. But also projects like these, which are really office furniture. And this is, again, Sotsas for Olivetti, which develops office furniture and adding just a little twist to the project to make of this project a sort of a totemic piece, a kind of a small architecture, like in the way it folds the, how you call them, like I said, I don't remember the name. By the way, it folds the metal plate. And in the way, you also add this small decoration, functional decoration of these small triangular holes. This moment, in this moment, the designer were called to experiment new materials, like, for example, this rubber floor, which was used for the first time in the metropolitan area called the Pirelli floor, that we have everywhere now. Or this stained concrete, which is a particular concrete. It's a patented concrete, which is produced. We found out also, or is still produced now. This is the Pirelli floor I was mentioning before. So to come to our project, we decided somehow to take this project as a reference and to condense this project into some furniture objects. So to transform this project using the material of the project. We first did a photographic survey with an Italian photographer called Giovanna Silva. And we took a day of trip around the metropolitan of Milano, taking pictures, illegal pictures. Because, as you know, it's not so easy to take pictures in the metropolitan. And then we selected a series of materials we were interested in. And we started to track back the companies which were producing them. So we had big success for some of them, which is very important. Maybe this made 80% of the project, like the concrete one. And a bit less, of course, for other materials. But for example, this is the concrete company. And with them, I mean, they restarted doing this kind of concrete a couple of years ago. And with them, we started experimenting again how to do large scale, large scale. For them, this is large scale. So it's 1 meter, 50 diameter, almost. But for them, this is large scale in the sense that they were used before to do little tiles. So they tried this for us. And we were trying to test possibilities to compose them into an object. Like in this case, a table, like a living room table. And then we selected a series of other material, again, this thing concrete, like this other station to make a smaller table, or this other thing concrete to make another smaller table, or a stool, in this case. We were also interested in the evolution of the Albini project for the line number two of the metropolitan that opened later, in which all this concrete paneling was then replaced by more economical metal paneling, which is this yellow one, the yellow one you see here. But the principle of the project is exactly the same. And so we tried also there to understand, because despite the fact that this was more an economical material, anyhow, it contained a series of features like the texture, the color, and this reinforcing molding of the plate. So out of that metal plate, we did the project of a paraven, which in English is actually folding screen. We found another one which we liked very much and we were interested in, which is used only in one station because of historical reasons, which is this blue embossed again metal panel again. And out of that, we made the project of a small cabinet. And then to finish the signature railing of the Metro Milano, which is really the signature of the Albini project, which is this red line, which indeed is part of the first red line of the metropolitan Milanese, which brings the user to the train almost, which always end with this special curve. And out of that, we decided to do a lamp, which is, and this is the project of the lamp. These are the family, let's say, this series of furniture, which somehow condense this urban project of Albini and Northern into a sort of domestic environment. And this is the project in place in Chicago, how it was realized and together with a good company of Point Supreme taught them on the back, which I think is not a case, that there were some assonance among the two. The lamp, together with the pictures of Giovanna Silva, the survey she did with us in the Metro, the lamp, together with other objects, the full screen, the table, and the cabinet. This, I mean, we are extremely happy about this project, I mean, ourselves, because we are happy about the result, which we finally saw only in Chicago. And we are happy because we will present, I mean, these objects will be realized again and distributed by the Maniera Gallery in Brussels. So somehow, the Biennale project found a sort of continuation afterwards. Actually, to stay, the reason also of this Maniera collaboration actually came for another project, which is a project, a much smaller project, which also almost with the same timing made us work together. Because in fall 2017, the gallery was invited by an Italian institution, which is connected with the Torino Art Fair, to be present with some designer they have to select, which in this case, we are. And we were associated with a stone cutter for the Val di Sousa, which is a valley north of Torino. So somehow, this kind of blind date, we had to deal with this blind date and try to understand what to do. And just to give you some insights, this is the typical stone of Val di Sousa and it's not a particularly precious stone. I mean, it's the stone that you use to do sidewalks, like the border of sidewalks, the border of the road. And of course, in Val di Sousa, you use it to do everything like the balcony and so on. So, but it's not a very precious stone, it's a sort of granite, it's a kind of granite, so a layered stone, not particularly bright. So this is how the stone comes to the atelier of the stone cutter in big blocks. This is how they open it. So first of all, they have to break it manually, put in some wedges, which expand and make the stone break in the weak point. And this is the stone where it breaks. And actually what we were interested, because we spent some days there, where was the quality of the stone, specifically the quality of the stone in the places, in the surfaces which were manually cut. And normally the surfaces which are manually cut are discarded by the stone cutter, because it's not the perfect one. They just take it out, they sew the block, they just discard this part. The result is a more, is not this surface, because of the break, is extremely bright. It contains a lot of metal, and it shines under the sun. When you cut it, the stone doesn't shine anymore. So we were extremely interested, we had to work harder to convince the stone cutter to keep this surface. And in order to make a set of objects, which are like somehow a set of monolithic objects, we are very interested to work this block that you saw before, almost as a set of geological samples. The thing that you do when you dig the ground with the machine, you take out this cylindrical piece of earth. So we were interested to take this block and to excavate it somehow, but keeping the quality of the upper surface. And at the same time, to excavate the legs, I will show you some picture. This is part of the laboratory of the work. This is part, again, of the... And so the way in which this monolithic object touched the ground is also worked out of the same block, so it's excavated out. And this set of volumes somehow when put together, they somehow twist into something else. Like we like to think of them as almost micro models or somehow micro buildings. So when we do this project, we think about how they could compose an urban environment, even in the small scale they are. These images show a little bit the difference among the upper surface, which is bright and the surface of the sides, which is cut with the saw and shows all the layering of the stone. And this is the bottom of one of the pieces. So here we are going to use this project, which is an ongoing project, which we are going to present as a finished product by June, more or less. So here what we are showing is the first approach to the project, which was a competition that we won two years ago. So the project is, in a way, it's how to build a house as a product of industry. And it's a very strange question because the question is how to build a house which doesn't have still a context, doesn't still have a place, and what to do with that. So we really, in a way, it's a house in which to make it, you have to focus on the inner qualities of it. And so the project is, in a way, research on types and how these types they can evolve. They can compress, expand, how they can adapt. And what this type is and what are the inherent qualities of the spaces we create. This is an image of Durand, the precede, les sondres architectures. And it's just as a starting point. So mainly, also to make a prefab house which doesn't have a client yet, it's also an open question because it doesn't have really qualities. You don't know what have to be the qualities of this space. It cannot be so specific because otherwise this house, which has to be prepared for an ex-client, we don't know what are the questions behind that. So in a way, for us, what was important was to create a space which we called Neutral Space, a space which is big enough and simple enough to host whatever. So it's a space which, in a way, can be transformed through time. Although if the house evolve with someone else come to live in it, it can be a space that takes other functions and it can also host the same functions at the same time. But so to do that, you need also to create spaces which are very defined and that also inform the Neutral Space with the basic uses of the house. And these spaces we call the edges, so the borders or edges. And we imagine this house to be the connection of two spaces. So a space which is very undefined and the spaces which are very compressed on the border of it, which are really specific, so which, at the end, could be kitchens, bathrooms, but also beds. So this is the first typologies we had done. It was two big spaces and then in between. And these spaces were always framed but these other smaller spaces on the roof, another space, of course, bedroom. So it does this one floor plus roof. But this, which you see on the left, could also become two floors. So the same typology, which has the peculiarity to be facing two sides, could be one or two floors, with or without roof. It opens possibilities. On the right, you see these small buildings. It even could suggest that it could become a bar, a building, made out of these typological apartments. So this is the expanded version of it. So instead of two neutral spaces, we have many more, smaller, bigger, very on the lower part, a very, I don't know, luxurious house with a gigantic space and the smaller spaces on the side or a symmetric one. So just an investigation on what this idea could bring to. This is the cross type. So it's a space, a big space, which is organized on a cross. And it should be on one floor or two floors. Create a tower, create a bar. And then the monodirectional one, which would, I don't know, be possible to build towards the wall or with a very main view. And this could also evolve in the same way. So it would have these edges on the back and divided the main spaces. And this could also become, if you think about it, putting them together, this could also become housing on a slope or almost like a fabric of buildings. And so here you see one of the main spaces of the, you have some of the simplest type, the living room, kitchen, slash, office. The kitchen is on the side, on the right, the very end. There is a stair, but in a way you see that the space could host many activities. And here is the bedroom, where also the bed is not in the middle of the space, but it's put inside these edges. And this is a project which is the first time we present it because it opened last week. So we also have very few pictures and also the way it's still not, we cannot still show it in full use. It was a commission from the Bazaar in Brussels in the occasion of their exhibition on Fernand Leger, which opened a few weeks ago. And they asked because of Leger and of his period in which he painted mainly circuses to make a space in front of the Bazaar for the circus activities, but in a way in a larger term. So cultural event related to circus, real acrobaties and so on. But the circus has always a weird feeling because it's always, in a way, put at the edge of the cities in a forgotten land. There is always, as somehow I said, sometimes I said, atmosphere around that. But then this very thin skin really separates this somehow sad and leftover environment from this magic world and surreal world of the circus. So although, yeah, the project was about that, what to do in a context. Now if you go back to our context, which was not really done for making a circus because it is in front of the Bazaar, which you see on the right, which is a beautiful building from Orta. But you see that the site is very narrow. On the left side there is a building site. So in a way, yeah, it felt a bit like there was a space, which was a space in between and at the same time on a slope, at the same time a place where a landscape project will come in the next months. So a changing environment to which the temporary pavilion which we built and which they asked that we could take away and put back again would have to adapt. But so in a way in this very narrow plot, the only solution possible was to make a half circus, which was fitting and giving this idea of grandeur but not really being so big and fitting to this narrow plot. And also because in this plan you can see the intervention which will come, the landscape intervention which will come in the next months. So even there it could fit in the leftover space of this landscape intervention. So it's a project which could now at the moment has been built in this way, but in the future can be built again in the next phase of the plot. So this is the structure in a way that was also very complicated. A circus as always is the tension cables, but the site was done as such that was not possible to put tension cable to build with this kind of structure proper of the circus. So the project became a structure which lays on its own and which lays on a socle, a socle which to make the very slopey ground flat. And which also has a very, in a way, strong foundations out of concrete. And now I talk about meters, but I don't know if it's 14 meters, but it's 7 meters radium. And then there is this skin which completely covered it, done of the same fabric of the circuses. So the question was how with the smallest intervention to create a pavilion which would give the idea of a circus, since the circus was not really possible to build there. So it was this half circus and this slope of the roof. And the fabric would be, of course, done in stripes, very light stripes, and they will explain later why. So beside these stripes, then there will be few objects which would populate it or also give it, express it more. So the entrance would be an enlightened entrance. The star would be the landmark to be, to say I'm here, and then some signals and so on. These are the few pictures of the last week after the opening. It's a very silent pavilion in a way in which the colors are so similar to the city. So at the first glance, from outside, it's a very simple shape, a bit mute, and it doesn't really reveal so much what is inside. And inside it's a half-circular space which is there to host these activities. And in a way, it's just a simple space. And it's done with just very few elements which you see here, which are metal structure, fabric, cables, and belts. But at the end, here we can find back this legé idea of having these spaces which we do not completely grasp. So the idea of the half-circle, the idea of this horizontal line, there are these lines that become the drawing of a legé in which you don't really understand how the space is. And these lamps which are there, which are switched on in the night, in a way, they reveal something which is very somehow linked to the work of legé. So there is this white background, these black structural lines. And then there are these colors which gives this real aspect to it. And that's the way it looks in the night. And it totally changes the aspect. We show you a couple of the last two projects. Till now we have shown you small-scale projects. We also would like to show you some reflection on a larger scale. And to start, we started with this project, which is the result of an invited competition. We did it back in 2013. It is a competition which has been organized by the Milano municipality about the refurbishment, a reconversion of a former velodrome which sits in the, almost in the center of Milano, the central area of Milano, which has been extremely important for the history of bike. It was, as you see, extremely populated. The problem of it was the weather. I mean, because of the weather, this wooden track, which has no roof on top, decayed. And at the same time, this wooden track, which was supposed to be measured 400 meters, was actually with the new rules. The new measure was 397.7 meters. It means that it was not official anymore. So no more interest to the competition there. The structure decayed. And all this important hurt of Milano, because it's still in the memory of the city, completely fell forgotten, until the moment in which the municipality wanted to refurbish it. It's also important, it's an important venue because it was the venue of the big concerts in Milano, the important one, so the Beatles played there. And after the Beatles, the last concert was the one of Elad Zeppelin, so Elad Zeppelin in Italian somehow. But it was a great disaster, because somebody had the idea of adding to them a list of Italian heroes like Luchadala and all these guys you see on the smaller lines, the new trolls, the rich and the poor, this kind of other, they were important, they were important, but at the same time, the fun of Elad Zeppelin, they didn't like this idea at all. So what happened, it was a riot. So, and this poor guy Morandi had to escape this situation because he started to sing and the riot began. So no more concert, and also for that reason, this place was, I mean, this is the last bad memory of the place. And this is the actual condition. Actually, competition, we didn't win. Competition was won by somebody else, of course, but nothing has been done on the side till now. So this is the actual condition. So a forgotten place, used sometimes to play rugby, American football, not rugby inside. So the team of American football of Milano plays inside. And then you have this big, huge, public area, forgotten, kind of a parking area in front. I have a pointer also, which is there. A school with no gym is important detail. Supermarket and some, and here on the lower part, there is a big new development in the area of the ex-fair of Milano with three huge towers by Liebeskind, Adid, and Isozaki, and a big park. So this somehow is the head, is somehow the mineral head of that big intervention. And yeah. So of course, the municipality of Milano did not know what to do in the place. So part of the exhibition, sorry, competition brief, was also the invention of the brief, of the program. And we proposed for that a public space. First of all, second, a public space dedicated to sports on wheel. So somehow a public space which could keep the memory of the place, but opening the space again as a public space. So imagine a stadium and arena closed off to reopen it to the city. So somehow our task was to invent a sort of new kind of public space which could work a different scale. So at the scale of the neighborhood and also at the scale of the city and the metropolitan area of Milano. So this was the first proposal of the competition, is the proposal with which we have been invited. So we just gave this image, which is an image taken from a model which somehow already contains all the elements of the project. So on the right you see the stadium. What we did is a set of actions. So we removed the walls among the structure. So we opened up completely the stadium to the city. So we kept the naked structure. We connect like this inside and the outside. We extended the small roof on top of the seats of the stadium toward the outside covering the public space outside. And somehow we connected all the cycle path of the city which were still on a project state to somehow the tracks we designed inside this public space. So, sorry, okay. So you see here the intervention. Again here the same school which is, sorry, the same school which is now connected. This is the inside of the stadium with the tracks we designed. And as you see, I mean the three, sorry, the three towers here are the development I was talking to you about. And all these red lines are the official bike tracks of the municipality of Milano, which we connected with a series of other tracks we designed. So somehow official tracks. Becomes playful parts in this case. At the same time inside this stadium there is still a possibility to do official sports. This is our idea. And this is a bit light. You see all the roof that covers the area. This is a Zoom, wait, this is a Zoom where you see what kind of activities we envisaged. So apart from the skate park, the playground, the school for the kind of a school of circulation, you say, like a kind of a police school for the kids, I had to learn how to bike on the street of Milano. Very dangerous street of Milano. And inside all the tracks and also the infrastructural area of the roof, which could serve as support for small concerts, for example. And here are the fields close by the school. So the school somehow, the idea was also that the school could get a new gym, a very big one for the sports. This is a Zoom on the Market area. Also there was a big project of diverting the traffic from that street to another street. We did with some mobility engineers in order to connect really the public spaces. The concert I was talking to you about there, there is a bike pole of match in the middle of the stadium. And here again the playground. So this is the plan of the project. Of course we liberated all the curved part. So this becomes completely accessible. And on the straight part under the seats, we have foreseen on this side a gym, which actually is already there. There is a very nice gym, abandoned one. We provided changing rooms for the schools and for the city so people who want to come there and have sports and start to run, they could use this area. A little hostel, a bike repair shop and a cafe. So this is somehow the social mix of activities that we are foreseen for the project. This is the last presentation model we did, maybe a scale one to 50, which shows the space outside, this bigger roof which extends toward the outside and also the permeability with the inside of the project. And this is the inside with the tracks I've talked to you about before. So some official tracks and some non-official tracks that becomes kind of playful parts, but also this red thread here is a running track, I mean, is a way to access a running track, a panoramic running track on the top, which runs on the top ring of the stadium. And this is the wrong title for the project to come. So this is the last project. Sorry. It's not the Vigorelli Milano, it's a project, we, an ongoing project we are working on in Albania. It's more a project which starts from a territorial vision, but then the result, it's a series of small interventions. So the bigger scale starts here. So, no, sorry, I did this wrong. Tirana, Dures, and then the road which connects the two. And so the road which connects the two is called Durana, which is a kind of never-ending construction of informal housing and illegal buildings. So if we go on here, that's the first stretch of road which starts from Tirana. So that was the piece in which we were in charge to work on. So maybe what I didn't see before is that the fact that what you see here is also a punctuation of lakes, which were not natural lakes, but artificial lakes, which were done as a production reservoir, agricultural reservoir for the, yeah, during the regime, communist regime. So here is the stretch of land we have worked on. It's, there is this road. The road is completely built with the commercial buildings. And this road, that was the question which was asked in the competition, completely cut the area. So in a way, there is no communication between the north and the south area of this land, even though they somehow they're part of the same environment. So, voila, this is the road. And on one side, these the hills. On the other side, these commercial buildings. And on the very end, these mountains. So in a way, the whole project lays on a big valley. And this big valley has several infrastructures which connect, which runs through, so this big road, which was the main issue, the abandoned rail track, some rivers. And then a punctuation of these lakes. So the project was, in a way, not to build bridges, as somehow we were probably asked, but to think of how to change the use of the landscape or the way the people would use the landscape through a series of section studies which you see here. So there is section one, two, three. Oh, what are all? Okay, it's the old way we call sections, but it's okay. Okay, now remember why they're called open. So these sections which would go from the river to the lake each time, and they would cross all these other infrastructures. Then with, this was not supposed to be a total project, this section, but it was supposed to be a study section in which through a series of punctual interventions, we would try to change the way the inhabitants use this space. And then we made some focus studies, so two of them being on the road, on the main road, F1 and F2, and then the third one being on one of those lakes. And what you see here in red are the possible interventions. So you see it's a constellation of interventions on a rather small scale, which then would allow this landscape to, yeah, somehow to be connected just by this small intervention which are rather small public scale, maybe sometimes just add a bench, sometimes add a series of lamps, sometimes a pavilion, but always starting from what is already there. So then we focus on this, in a way the project went on, but we focused mainly on the area around this lake, Kachar Lake, which is also one of these water reservoirs to turn it into, from the production lake to a leisure one. So the project was, yeah, to redefine a light path around the lake and through a series of small pieces, like a beach, a platform, and a diving platform to how to change the use of this place. Voila, thanks. All right, well thank you so much for a great lecture and it's wonderful to see the work. I wanted to, I just, I have a few questions, I think, and then we can open it up to the audience, but maybe just to talk a little bit about, maybe picking up, we had a conversation earlier today, but just a little bit about the way that you're working, maybe how you've established your office in Milan and now in Brussels, but also with working in different places. We spoke a little bit about this, but I think how you start to work and your approach in dealing with sites like between the offices and the locations, and I thought that was very interesting what you were saying earlier today and how you're able to kind of work between places and feeling, you know, part of the scene in Milan but maybe not originally being from there, and I think that's important for the context of the students who are coming from all over the world and approaching new places. Yeah, as we said, maybe you can also add things, Ambra, while among the information I give, but I mean the office is pretty young in the sense that it started in 2013. We were working actually the way we met together because we were somehow asardously coupled in a studio as assistant, so we started to work together in a place which is Mindrisio, actually, I mean we started to work there together as assistant and actually in a place where Ambra already also studied, I was, I studied in Venice. This also makes that our somehow education and the way we were looking at projects at problem, urban problems were completely different and this is also what we appreciated at the very beginning and also now, of course. Of course, now we might have aligned a little bit more our ideas, like at the beginning it was not exactly like that, but it's what we found productive and somehow that was our first step. At that time, I was living in Milano already, you were already also living in Milano since a few years, not a lot and so the most easy thing that we thought was to establish our office in Milano and Milano for us, I mean for me at least, I think for us is not our native city, it's a foreign, somehow it was a new context for us and we are still discovering this context because it's one of the city in which the real inhabitants of Milano, it will never allow you to be a real inhabitant of Milano somehow, it's kind of quite conservative this part and so the real architects of Milano are also the one that have studied at the Polytechnic, they have this kind of education which is quite specific and we are really collaborating with them in many competitions and also we are somehow starting to understand how it works. So I mean, Milano is not our context, I mean, I studied in Venice, Amber studied in Madrid, she's from Rome, so somehow already like in the beginning of our story we already touched many, many cities. At the time, no, at the time, today I would say, Amber lives in Brussels, so the office that had, still as maybe kind of a Milanese connotation but not a real, real Milanese, but like an imported Milanese connotation, now has opened up to another city which is Brussels and we both teach together in Paris, so this European condition somehow allows us to move quite a lot. Which also means that the projects in a way, yeah, we have worked on a few projects in Milan, but at the end the projects are really from everywhere and we are not really, yeah, the architects of a certain city. That's interesting, because I was going to ask also, to what degree would you say your work is indebted to a kind of Italian design scene or Italian sort of history, I mean you begin the lecture with a reference, but even in the Chicago project that there's a reference to the new domestic landscape and Bas, which you don't mention, but I'm curious about where do you situate the work in relation to that? Yeah, we are somehow, of course, I mean, we are Italian, we have our office in Milano, we are also fascinated, this is not the main reason, but we are fascinated by, I would say, a specific moment of Milanese, Italian architecture and design, which is the moment in which, I mean, I was showing you before the Valentina, the Valentina typewriter, but also this Sotsas project for this banal office, I would say, a cardboard folder, and a classifier, maybe it's called exactly that furniture piece. And that moment, I think that there was on one side an economical question, so Italy was somehow, the economy was pretty well, so there was a, the amount of architects was not so, was less big than what we have today, there was work, there was energy, there was company, we would call them today Enlightened, so they were eager to have architects working for them, like developing products, developing objects, and so on. And I say architects, because there were no, I mean, there was, but there were no disciplinary distinctions that we have today. And all these guys, as I said before, they were all, they all had an architectural education with them, and then it's their life, their personal experience that brought Bob Norda towards graphic design, Vignelli too, or I mean, Albini stayed, he was always an architect, he was always an architect, but also people like Salk Steinberg, for example, I mean, he was architect, I mean, he studied, he took his diploma in Milan in the Polytechnic, and so he's also architect. I mean, this kind of pre-war, let's go, in which there was this architectural education that allowed you to do all these kind of jobs, while now you have to study interior design, graphic design, we are heading towards this society that with our project and also our attitude towards, like, yes, we can do small objects, we can do Appavillion, we want to do the stadium, from the first, there is no difference. I mean, we don't feel that we need a designer to make this stool or we need, I don't know, a planner to do the, a urban planner to do the stadium. We like to somehow tackle all these things, these scales, these objects, as they are the same thing, as they were the same thing, sorry. But also if you take examples like Branzi or Superstudio or Angola Pietro, these people were always working on different scales, and that was pretty normal. Yeah, yeah. How do you say, think about and, or define maybe the relationship between architecture and furniture? Yeah. Sort of furthering. How do you make distinction between those things? Because I could see some things in the, maybe in the representation of it, and which I think somewhat translates into the built work, but I'm curious to hear a little bit more about that. Yeah. You want Amber to... I don't know, I mean, in a way, it's, yeah, we do, we do small architectures, we do furniture, but it's always about how to build the narration behind it. So if you talk about the small tools, they were tiny pieces of stone, but they were also for us architecture, or models of architecture, or the metro line, the metro line, furnitures were starting from an infrastructural project, or the park design pavilion, it was almost in existent room with a series of furnitures around it. We always try to challenge different weights, but we try always to, not always, but the most of the time to make these different layers of reading and of scale to coincide or to sort of overlap. Yeah, I think it's clear. I mean, I think there's also something about the architecture that tends to be, at least in what you've shown here so far, a kind of treatment of the architecture, to some degree, as a sort of white background that then you play with, whether or not that remains a kind of real through the image, like the photograph of the pavilion where you say it becomes more of a cut out, it almost erases itself in some ways, and then the furniture, contrasted with the furniture that is brightly colored or very material. I mean, I think for me, maybe that would be my last question is just about the relationship between color and material, that color is very material, it seems, in a way. I don't know, maybe it's also as a contrast with, let's say, maybe the work that was done when you were at Peter Zumthor's office, that color and material are so, you can't think of one without the other, perhaps, through his work, and I think you're doing something different, of course, but how do you think about that a little bit? For instance, in the, yeah, even there, it really, each time, it's something else. Sometimes the colors are more awake, almost like how to translate the drawing into reality. So, for instance, in the case of the pavilions, it was an exercise on how to make it the most abstract as possible, and even the frames around the panels, how to make readable the drawing of the project. So it was really about, yeah, making a drawing physical. And in the case of the metro, it was, yeah, it was obviously starting from the quality, inherent quality of the materials, and now to make something new out of it. Anyone, any questions from the audience? If we have a microphone, actually? Any questions? I'm sure there's some. Too long of a spring break. Good. Hey, I have a question. So, hey, this is work, cool. Hey, so when you guys do the urban design project, like the one for the school, the gym, did you guys do a community outreach or something, or like y'all like, wait, how do you say this? Sorry, I'm asking the question without thinking about it. Or was that part of the program? Was that part of the program or y'all like, did community? No, I mean, in that, like, that exhibition, this competition had no brief. I mean, the brief was the building and the fact that we had to do something in the building, the municipality did not know what. So we had to work also with somebody like programmers somehow, people who are able to program activities to understand how some activities could be sustainable because of course you can have a lot of good ideas but then there is also an economical factor behind. So this, if we do something like this, it should be economically sustainable. But the old brief, the idea to open it into a public space, the idea of putting an hostel there to connect it with the park on the south, with the school on the west, all this thing we did because we were extremely convinced that we needed not to, in that case, not to build a sort of object separated from the city, but really to weave all this connection through the building and make it part of the city. So to somehow create a sort of fluidity among the outside public space and this enclosed one. So as soon as you enter this arena, you are in a completely different space but still a public space, but of a different kind. So we invented it, we didn't win. Another project, another project which, what I can say, I mean, it was a bit bizarre on, if you think somehow from the American perspective, I would say because that project kept the American football activity but it completely cut the space behind the, how you call it, you don't call it goal, you call it when you put the ball on the other side of the line. So I immediately imagined all these players running to reach and immediately finding a wall of a glass glazed window of a shopping center to bump. I imagine the activity would have been like inside the shopping mall to look at this huge guys bumping on the glass screen. So, I mean, it was not a very... Visionary. Visionary, because it transformed this project, this velodrome into a mall. It kept some sport activity like the American football one. At the same time, it would have destroyed really the idea of that space and they didn't do it because I mean, this is also like part of the somehow Italian context. They didn't actually check with the historical preservation office if it was possible to transform that building or not, it turned out it was not possible, it was protected. So, I mean, they organized this whole competition inviting people from outside, paying them because it was the people who were invited to do this where was paid and then you discover you cannot build the project. So, in this case, luckily, but because the project, the winning project was not super good. Yeah. Kirsten, we have a question. Kirsten, for the mic. I was hesitant if I had to ask a question but then I thought maybe, why not? No, well, I was wondering to what extent you see your own work as it has been mentioned so far as a continuation of or at least as the ultimate consequence of the Florentine radicals. It's to say that after declaring architecture impossible after spending some time in Milan, you seem to propose an architectural practice without architecture. It's the city or it's the landscape and it's, well, urban furniture and furniture. Everything else is taken away. Even the house up to a point, it's, well, it was called neutral or whatever you call it. It's at most an envelope. The furniture has to do the job. So, is what we see, is this a statement of intent, you think, or is it merely, I would say, the result of, I mean, a selection of the day? So, in other words, are you gradually working towards an architectural practice without architecture? No, I don't think so. I mean, personally, it would not be so convenient. Economically. Economically convenient. No, but. But this I'm not sure. In fact, I think you probably earn better money with furniture than with architecture, but that's a whole other bit, yeah. It's difficult to. No, I mean, for me, it's like you guys, I mean, okay, I know you well. I mean, as you know, very well. I have a feeling that you take a radically different track as I would say us, or Baoku, or let's say, or Dogma, or the people, I would say just before you, in a sense. I mean, I think our desperation with the situation was to do as much as architecture as we could. To the point, of course, that it ends up very often in extremely, I would say, abstract, paper-like projects, but okay, still trying. And you, with a few years difference, you revitalize, I would say, Branzi's Hot House argument, which he wrote in a book, and you'd say, well, perhaps we end up in architecture at a certain point, but that we can do later. I mean, we don't need to hurry. And in many ways, I find it I don't know, it seems a bit of a more yeah, positive or so approach. I mean, you know, it's like the confrontation is elsewhere. But then again, it's interpretation, I don't know. I like to see, I like to hear this interpretation because there are also many things you do without the conscience, a certain conscience of. Consciousness. Consciousness. Consciousness. Of doing. So yes, maybe we are allowed to do things you were not extremely, you were not allowed to do at a certain moment. You said that you, Dogma, Baoku project come out of a desperation of a certain moment. And so you needed obstruction in order to exist also. And on the contrary, maybe we need less obstruction in order to exist nowadays. Yeah, well, I think so. I think in a certain way. I think it's more alive for what you guys are doing in many ways. It's more alive. Yeah, I think so. It's nice that as a compliment, I mean. It's true, I mean, there is also how to say I think that a certain, a few years ago, I think there was a sort of a fear of a, like a post-modern fear somehow. I think that also provoked a series of projects like Dogma project and so on. I think this bit is sold now. Like you don't risk to do a project like, I don't know, the furniture pieces of Chicago to be labeled as a post-modern, I think. But it's my opinion, I would say. You also have to say something. Yeah, I know. I mean, I think I'm gonna answer for them in some ways, but this is not my place necessarily. But I think the, I agree with the alive or vitality. I mean, I think what you're suggesting is true. I think the, it's interesting though, but the extension of the how much the work is indebted to others and or not, and maybe redefining or taking parts of things and rethinking it. Because I think there is much more of a focus in your work that maybe is not so much from the past, but your own internal working, I think. And it's pretty clear in looking at the images that you've presented that even from the velodrome competition which you say is from five years ago, you can see all of the elements that you're still working on today, right? So for me, that's a very clear, I don't know, I would go so far as to say a kind of singular focus, but it suggests a body of work and intention and actually something quite conscious in a way, even if maybe it doesn't, it feel like that as much or maybe it's not important to claim that at the moment. But to me, I think that establishment of a body of work so early in a practice is quite remarkable, I think, in the context, so yeah, anyway, I don't know. Any other? Yes, we have a couple now, okay, now we're going. They're coming, no other question. Hi, I was wondering if you can comment on your relationship with the use of references and of the continuum of architecture across history and how we fit into it. I feel like we're quite fearful of using references sometimes and you guys seem to just so seamlessly do it. Does that question make sense? Yeah, the relation with references, I mean. The relationship with references across. I lost a couple of words. Across history, the relationship with references and where, how you use them to fit into the history of architecture somehow. Yeah, I would say maybe I can answer through the project of the furniture pieces. Like they were actually part of the Make New History exhibition of Chicago. And for us, I mean, it was quite clear. I mean, it's a difficult question. I mean, this Make New History question. Your question, but also the question of the Biennale. I mean, it can turn really into, yeah, I would say. It was not, let's say, a light question for a Biennale, I would say, you know. And our interpretation, which came also, I don't know, maybe the lightness which we took this project is also because we had this project somehow in mind. And it's something we wanted to do already and this became, I mean, somehow the project doesn't spring from the question, but it already answered maybe the question. So, but we didn't have to sit at the table and to think, okay, this is the question. Now we have to make a project which answered this question and how we do this. It's something that was already there around and somehow there was this coincidence. And for us, in that case, I mean, the reference is somehow a sort of, is connected to a sort of passion. And I would say love for the city where we used to live, some of both of us, but also the passion for certain architectural project, like that one. And for us, it was natural to take part of this and to transform it to something completely different in a different context. So, I mean, it's clear that this, I mean, when you see this set of objects together, they are the metropolitan of Milano. I mean, it's clear. I mean, you see the lamp, you see the stain concrete, you, if you are from Milano, you understand what it is. If you are not from Milano, like a lot of people were passing by at the bay end, I mean, through the help of this picture, they could really immediately start to understand the connection of the thing. So, yeah, it's sort of a direct transformation into something else. But also, if I can add something, it also wants to bring back a certain reflection about contemporary time in a way how at a certain moment in time, there was this big energy and production and the things were done exactly for that. There was a huge energy to build the metro line and new materials were tested. And while nowadays, we, yeah, basically an architect choose something out of the catalog and that we found it very interesting that we would bring this reflection just by comparing these two moments, no? By also showing these materials which are so specific and that they've been invented for this metro, then we wanted to say, look what has been done at a certain moment and look where we are now. Without necessarily being too critical, but also just to bring a reflection out of it. One here in the middle. Yeah, thank you very much. I just had this question in mind, like what, because you still teach or part of you still teach? And I wanted to ask, like just what do you learn from teaching basically? Or what do you get from the work, from your students basically, for your own practice? It's a space of experimentation, like I think for everybody. We have a teacher. We somehow, we met through teaching. So we start to exchange our ideas to have our first contrast. Having, making the critics of project of students, having the first ideas. We decided to participate in the first competition because we were in the same learning, teaching environment. And we found this very productive and we kept this through the years. I mean, we started to get teaching together, then we separated somehow, also for job opportunities and so on. But we are now teaching together again. And of course it's the space you dedicate to teaching is under percent part of, I would say, the production of the office, not because you use studios to produce your project, of course, but it's because it continuously refresh, renew your knowledge. And the debate among us. In a way we met each other by debating on architecture through teaching and that's the way we can keep in talking about it, not in a practical terms as in the real projects we do, but more on a wider term. But these historical references from the 70s and 80s, they play a big role in the way how you teach or not so much. I say not really, they were interested in that, but it's not what we are teaching at the moment. You never know. Yes. Some of your projects involved conversion of legs into other uses, like a Kasha leg. What other uses did you intend in your projects? In the lake of Kasha. No, I'm thinking if there are other projects with lake, but if, I mean, that specific project we did, which is still not realized, somehow it's on hold and we hope that the city of Tirana soon will arrive really to the edge of the metropolitan area and their interest will touch also our project which is there waiting. So the, I mean, mainly as Ambra was saying before, like Albania was a communist regime. Till 1989, of course, played a role, like I think till the 90s, like early, early 90s. As many communist regime, it was a sort of idraulic empire. So the state, the planning of the state was total. So specifically in Albania, which was one of the most, it was somehow the North Korea of Europe. Nobody knew what was going on in Albania and the state were deciding at the time if you would have been a farmer, if you would have been an engineer and so on. And if you would have been a farmer, they would have decided where you had to work in a specific place, when there is no possibility to move. So all the, somehow the balance among city and countryside was fixed by the state. It was no possibility to go out of their boundaries. And all the agriculture was organized to feed the country because little by little, they cut all the economical relation with the other communist countries. They were arguing with China, with Russia, Yugoslavia, of course. And so the state, they were alone. So they had to produce everything they had what they had to eat at the end. So the lakes were extremely important because they provided all the water for agriculture. And this, after 89, so the 90s, all this hydraulical network was destroyed because everybody started to build their houses on the agricultural land. Like the first act of rebellion was to go from the countryside, from the mountains to go to Tirana and to build a house in Tirana because that was the city of opportunities. So it means that they needed space. They needed plots. Everybody occupied some agricultural plots and all this network of hydraulical networks was cut. So our project, I mean, does not foresee to rebuild the hydraulical network because it's impossible. I mean, the current urban development is not, does not allow to do that but we want to restore little pieces. And for example, for the lake, our idea was indeed to transform this lake which was once upon a time working for agriculture. Still a little bit it does, but not so much but still drains the water from the sides of the hills. So the water drains into this big basin. And we wanted to transform this urban slash agricultural abandoned landscape into a park. A park which is an agricultural park but also a leisure park with a very delicate act. So tracing the path around the park reinforced it with some key objects. So some of them are big objects like the diving platform, the beach, the floating platform and so on. Some of them are very small objects. So the system of bench, what you use for urban design. So a system of bench, dustbin, all this kind of stuff. So bigger and smaller object. So we felt that in the memory of the place also, I mean, this lake are extremely important even if it's a memory that has been rejected as a bad memory because it was part of the regime. At the same time, we wanted to turn that into a positive aspect. So to revitalize this lake idea, this lake are amazing. The landscape around this lake is something really beautiful. I mean, we spent a lot of time there at the lake. One last question. Well, thank you very much. Thank you. For you.