Alessandra and Marcello, as partners of your architecture firm, what did you see in each other that made you want to work together?
Marcello Galiotto: We met during our studies at university. Alessandra did a degree in history of architecture, and I did a degree in architectural design. We have very different backgrounds and interests, we each bring something different to the working process and now to our firm. I think that is something we cherish in the other person.
Alessandra Rampazzo: That means that we can deal with projects in our own way, and when we combine them, that’s our biggest strength. We can cover all the bases. Like Marcello said, I’m passionate about research, history, I take care of administrations and municipality, site supervisions… While Marcello is more involved in composition, design, he’s very detail oriented in terms of concept and theory. That’s one way of understanding our different roles, and then our passion is what brings us together.
It must also be useful to bounce ideas off one another, and have that sense of comfort and familiarity working closely together for so long.
MG: Absolutely. Alessandra is my family, I think of her like a sister. I really believe we are our strongest when we work together; we can discuss and understand each other really fast. When we work on separate projects, we can still help each other, or offer that comfort you mentioned, we know that we are not alone. We have an immediate trust, and that’s really important.
AR: We have the same basic values when it comes to architecture in general, so it’s easy for us to understand each other and bring something that enriches the other’s ideas.
MG: For example, especially when we do competitions, I’ll have a ton of ideas going around in my mind, but Alessandra is kind of outside the design process, so she is great at distilling everything, understanding the goals and putting together a text that is powerful and concise. That’s how we move forward together.
“Every project is a balance of influences: the surroundings, the existing environment, the traditions, the current time… There is a story of culture that is really important to know, especially as young architects.”
You were doing a lot of competitions and private projects when you first opened your firm. Why is that?
MG: I think the competitions are the best way to try to express yourself without any clients. When we first started our firm AMAA, we were just finishing studying with Massimo Carmassi, our mentor, who was quite strict in a way. So after that, we really just wanted to try new things. We figured that the best way to do that was competitions. But now I think we’ve actually pushed it so far that competitions are not the right space for us anymore.
What do you mean?
MG: It’s a tricky moment. Our ideas and our research are becoming more complex, more forward-thinking, and I think this makes it difficult to win competitions in Italy.
AR: Italy is not super ready for these concepts in terms of public spaces and public buildings. You need to be careful. It’s difficult, you need to really find the bones of architecture and keep that in mind. We’re pushing a lot with language and expression, we want to grow and negotiate and develop together, and the public side just isn’t ready for that. Our ideas I think are getting away from what the public is imagining. In the private sphere, that’s where we can push things, you can bring the client by the hand. The public is a bit more scared of change, they want to play it safe. So if you are a pioneer, it’s difficult.
Italians of course have a great love of history and tradition; they surely value the staying power of buildings. I can imagine it’s hard to break away from that.
AR: I think it’s not just about being conservative of the memory of the past, it also has to do with being scared of spending, and thinking that change and experimentation costs more money or is really expensive.
MG: It’s always a battle with every project. You have to protect your idea from the beginning, but at the same time, be open to discussions with your client. The ideal client for us is opening their mind at every level. But at the end of the day, every project is a balance of influences from the client, the surroundings, the existing environment, the traditions and culture, the current time… There is a story of culture that is really important to know, especially as young architects. You need to have a respect for the past.
Would you say your project, It’s Kind of a Circular Story, is a good example of preserving the old and bringing in a vision of the future?
MG: It’s Kind of a Circular Story, a design installation for the Venice Biennale where we used recovered waste material and brass to create a table, it brings a new life to these materials. It’s a living piece, taking primitive materials and their history and building with them. It’s all about existing elements and how you can rethink them. I like to reference this book by Sou Fujimoto called Primitive Future. It’s a great title and reference for us as architects, because we don’t want to be simply colonizing the space and making it completely different. We care about the history, we are looking at space and emotion and poetry and how we can bring these elements to our projects.
AR: Another good example would be Pleonastic is Fantastic, that was a very small project where we restored a Venetian barchessa — but it really tells a story, and it completely changed the life of an existing building. You don’t need to add much, you can still preserve the past and add something contemporary. You don’t need to go to the moon to bring in this eye for the future.
MG: We’re really focusing on adaptive reuse. In the US for example, it’s common to just demolish buildings and make something new. But what’s most interesting for us is how we can keep the past and reuse it, build anew with it. That’s important for us, we love elements like the patina from old materials like brass or concrete… It lends so much character.
AR: This is the kind of expression that we love, it really allows us to show ourselves. We’re ambitious in terms of our architectural language. We call our office a collaborative office for research and development because we really want to work with every field, even art and photography, to create architecture that inspires. The more we collaborate, the better things get. It’s not just a single voice that counts, and it goes back to what we said at the beginning, that we are working together. We’re now in a moment of collective architecture.
It sounds like your passion is really what ties everything together in your practice.
MG: Passion is what guides us. Without passion, you’d stop studying architecture after two months! (Laughs)
AR: Without passion, you couldn’t deal with the responsibility that comes with this profession, especially in a country like Italy. Architecture means building something that lasts forever. It’s building for life. That’s why we stay inspired by art and books and design and everything, because if you don’t have passion, you won’t survive.