I took one day trip to the Venice Biennale of Art yesterday, which resulted in a few considerations. It was my first time at the Art exhibition, but I have to say it didn't feel that much different from the Architecture Biennale: a loosely connected collection of pieces, the usual art pundits and a few lay people. The selection represented a stark return to hand-made, lower-craft art. Gone are the pristine pieces of the young british artists' inspired art seen at the end of the nineties, and so are the huge installations. A lot of the work showed a return to a hands-on production that was somewhat forgotten in the past 10/15 years. I am not an art critic or expert but that was really not much that left an impression. Mostly it was the developing world's pavilions that showed more engaging, interesting work, but that might have also simply been the fascination of the western white man for exotic culture formatted to the understandable standards of occidental contemporary art. Who knows. As your stereotypical architect I always find myself looking the other way, at that interesting crack in the floor or the way the steel beams join the brick wall, or the belts holding the crane together.

Just before the summer we were contacted by a local M&E engineer to cooperate on the refurbishment of an 1880's terrace house in the outskirts of town. The commission came from a developer who had bought the house and was looking to renovate and resell for a premium. It all started with a... View full entry

Mario Cucinella Architects, Expo 2015 Italian Pavillion Competition entry Zaha Hadid Architects, Baku Cultural Center. I am not sure which one of the two this one is... Nope, I can't tell them apart. I am kind of speechless, if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, this is like oral sex in... View full entry

Remember the whole ordeal about finding a place? There is no such thing as a free lunch, apparently. We were in our space for about 5 months, co-working with another company. What brought that relationship to an end was not so much what happened between the studio and them (we did a couple of... View full entry

So… we did this design for a restaurant (the third of the series, talk about getting pigeon-holed). A few weeks after we handed in the drawings the client called us back complaining that the usual contractor was out of the game and, two weeks from the planned opening, they had no one to do... View full entry

So, yeah, apologies. Starting this blog seemed like a very good and very manageable idea, but then when it all steamrolled into march it was firmly positioned on the back seat where it languished so far. The situation so far: The location We have settled into our "office" at the beginning of... View full entry

As time goes by I am starting to realize that this whole gig will be as much about planning as it will be about improvisation. When me and Stefano started talking about our marketing strategies we sort of pushed the whole multimedia/printed material part of it in the back of our mind, thinking it... View full entry

When you think about setting up an office you obviously should start to work out, first and foremost, how you are going to get clients. But that is such an extensive subject (and really a lifelong quest for anyone in any business) (and I know really so little about it right now) that it would... View full entry

Salve! This is a blog about starting up your own practice. From scratch. From nothing. From zero, with no trust-fund money, political connections or rich spouses. Well, this is actually a blog about ME (and my partner) starting MY OWN practice. But you get the picture. So, on with the... View full entry