PROUST QUESTIONNAIRE – PEOPLE OF DESIGN VERSION!

What prescient youthful memory relates to your present career?

On a holiday with my parents, I got lost in the largest of Istambul’s underground water tanks build in Byzantine times reusing fragments of earlier architectures. The upside-down giant stone head of a Medusa – roughly re-employed as the base of a column – showed me both architecture’s frailty and long-term responsibility.

On the other side, I realized
only much later that the house designed for my family Luigi Caccia Dominioni; its serene character, at the same time very cozy and very elegant, might have had an unconscious “pedagogical” effect in my work.

What are three basic rules you learned from your mentors?

I think of myself as a rather self-thaught person, recklessly shifting from my MIT’s extremely scientific education to the very scholarly researches in architectural history done once back in Italy. Programming self-learning computers in LISP language or retracing the geometric construction of the volutes of Ionic capitals taught me to;

1) employ the fragments of established knowledge and procedures with respect but never applying them mechanically or trusting them completely;

2) accept a reasonable level of arbitrariness and intuition in the formulation of the response to a problem, but also the need to constantly check its output with experimental data;

3) employ, as Douglas Hofstadter says, “variations on a theme as the crux of creativity”; often subtle transformations on a known theme, if pursued coherently, can lead you further than total breaks of current cultural states.

What project launched your career?

Certainly the unexpected win
of an important urban design competition for the urban regeneration of a former industrial site in Venice, the former Junghans factory complex on the south edge of the large Giudecca island.

To graft on the existing fabric of one of the most delicate environments gave me a very high level of anxiety, especially with a client which was far from ideal.

Building D, Junghans area, Venice, Italy, 2001. Photo credit: Cino Zucchi.
A social housing building in the former industrial area of the Junghans factory, conserving the old brick smokestack and operating a contemporary interpretation of the white Istria stone corniche of the old Venetian houses.

But one of the four new buildings I designed – the so-called D Social housing complex – has been widely published abroad; its windows framed in white Istria stone – a “graphic” interpretation of a very ancient Venetian constructive custom – has been somehow considered as as a concrete proof of how a contemporary approach can act in historical contexts with much sensibility yet without nostalgia.

Any music playing while you work?

Surely yes, I almost cannot design without my “Radio Cino”, that is my ITunes collection of 90.567 songs playing in shuffle mode.

My musical tastes are both refined and rather eclectic, ranging from French “Nouvelle Vague” artists like George Brassens and Juliette Greco, through my “New Wave” heroes of the eighties such as Elvis Costello et Nick Lowe all the way to contemporary indie music, particularly the Canadian scene.

I think that A.C. Newman, the leader of “The New Pornographers” is a musical genius, and their singer Neko Case one of the most interesting voices.

Click on the names to play a playlist

Do you work in PJs or three-piece suits?

When I am at the design table,I always wear a long work apron, with rubber bands sawn by my wife at the sleeve edges to protect my shirts cuffs to get black from the smudges of the 4B lead mines I use for sketching.

It’s faded blue color and the holes at the cuffs caused from rubbing them on the parallel line ruler became also an icon, and the studio people treat it with great respect.

What is your current design state of mind?

Very curious, happy and experimental.

What living designer/architect do you most admire?

Even if I like the work of colleagues doing research of very different kinds – among the young ones, I thinkFrancesca Torzo and her Z33 in Belgium is a real revelation.

I think that Jacques Herzog and Pierre De Meuron are still the most inspiring contemporary figures.

Photo – Julia Nahmani

Discover
Francesca Torzo

Source photo – © Herzog & de Meuron

Discover
Jacques Herzog & Pierre de Meuron

As Stanley Kubrick in his films continuously changed filming instruments and moods to adapt to different scripts – from Barry Lyndon to A Clockwork Orange, form Lolita to Shining – so they always surprise us with their amazing ability to invent according to the specific theme.

What past designer/architect inspires you the most?

Discover Gunnar Asplund

Maybe

Gunnar Asplund :

In front of his Woodland cemetery (done in collaboration with his marvelous colleague Sigurd Lewerentz) you almost wish to die to be buried there, and entering in his addition to the Göteborg City Hall – with its tapestry woven with all the names of the people participating in its construction – is like bathing in a honey jar.

What is your most marked design quality?

I would respond quoting my beloved Paul Valéry:
“Mine is a world of patience done by an inpatient person.”

How would you like your designs to go down in history?

In an open, adaptive way, hosting the changes in values and lifestyles of their inhabitants with sweetness and lightness.

What peer quality do you most value?

Intelligence and open-mindedness.

Which project is the epitome of your work?

Lavazza Campus, Turin, Italy, 2017. Photo credit: Cino Zucchi.
On the site of a former energy plant, the regeneration of the area includes workspaces for 700 people, two restaurants, an event and congress center, a design school, a company museum, the exhibition of the remains of an ancient romanesque basilica found during excavations, a gym and a recreation center, and a public garden with a fountain.

Among the recent ones, The Lavazza Campus in Turin is a good example of how the collaboration between a city, a client and an architect is able to produce an “urban regeneration” where the open space design keeps together different functions, igniting new social activities and at the same time becoming a loved backdrop of everyday life both for the Lavazza employees and the wider neighbourhood.

Lavazza Headquarters, Turin, Italy, 2017. Photo credit: Cino Zucchi.
Lavazza Headquarters staircase.

Lavazza Campus, Turin, Italy, 2017. Photo credit: Andrea Martiradonna.
Entrance to the public lobby from the park.

How are your country of belonging’s values reflected in your work?

Italy…

The amazing heritage in architecture and material culture possessed by Italy and Europe in general risks to enclose them in a nostalgic bubble, and prevent them from dealing with the perils and challenges of globalization.

At the same time, I think that the history of Italian design culture has been always marked by a complexity and capacity of interpretation given by the layered structure of the territory it was operating on, a quality i tried to read in my 2014 Italian Pavilion at the 2014 Venice Biennale that I called « Innesti / Grafting ».

Discover the project “Innesti/Grafting”; Italian Pavillon italien of Cino Zucchi

What always inspires you?

I’m always inspired by the diversity and strangeness of human culture.

Source photo : https://take-a-little-thyme.myshopify.com/collections/glassware

If a spell were to transform you into an object, by all means, what would you like to be, and why?

A jug, holding and pouring water yet with an inner beauty.

What is your favorite place in the world?

Both Venice and New York. Two collective, almost delirious landscapes built not by monks but by merchants.

What design or architecture project do you wish you would have thought of yourself?

Palazzo Massimo alle Colonne in Rome by Baldassarre Peruzzi.

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Source photo : https://ildatato.wordpress.com/2016/07/08/palazzo-massimo-alle-colonne/

If you could host any three guests, past or alive, over for dinner, who would you choose and what would you dare serving?

Paul Valéry, Isabelle Huppert and Karl Kraus.
I’d serve Lark’s Tongues in Aspic (King Crimson) and Savoy Truffle (les Beatles).

Click on the names to discover a biography or to play a playlist

What is your mantra?

“Fail, Fail Again, Fail Better.” – Samuel Beckett

What is your dream? THINK BIG!

My greatest dream is a long, dreamless nap on my sofa on a Sunday afternoon… one where I don’t have to go catch up on unfinished business as I do most weekend!