Architecture meets the school, Marco Casamonti
The students of the Secondary Schools of Second Grade in Padua, Rovigo and Provinces meet architecture
On May 19, 2022, at the new Padua Convention Center designed by architect Kengo Kuma, architect Marco Casamonti (Archea Associati) spoke about the close connection between architecture and art, in the presence of more then 300 students and 21 teachers.
Art is timeless, it’s the heritage of our knowledge and must be loved, a tool for communicating the beauty that makes us free and rich, and so is architecture, which precisely from art can draw ideas and insights for design.
In designing, the architect does something that will serve the lives of others: he grasps problems and turns them into opportunities, he offers beauty that makes one smile, he projects an image by creating a link between the past of the place, that is tradition and knowledge, the present that is to be seen and grasped, and the future that is to be imagined. Only by using these three elements )past, present, and future) which the architect puts together like an alchemist projects can communicate beauty, freedom, and respect.
Through the presentation of his works, Marco Casamonti explained how all this can happen, how art can be the basis of design. He showed that architecture is able to design spaces, public or private, in which people’s lives are simpler and more pleasant, spaces that communicate beauty and create happiness.
Marco Casamonti
Marco Casamonti (Florence, 1965), architect and designer, is a full professor at the Genoa Faculty of Architecture. He is a dedicated researcher and critic who works on various aspects of contemporary architecture, publishing studies, participating in congresses and giving lectures as a theoretician, academic and architect. He has been Editor in Chief of Area international Architecture and Design Arts magazine since 1997 and has been joint managing editor - with Paolo Portoghesi - of Materia magazine since 1999. In 1988 he joined forces with Laura Andreini and Giovanni Polazzi to found Archea Associati, in which Silvia Fabi also became a partner in 1999; the firm, with about a hundred architects working at six diferent locations - Florence, Milan, Rome, Beijing, Dubai and Sao Paulo - works mainly in the areas of architecture and design, taking the landscape, city and building as its starting-points to find an additional dimension of cultural expression in projects ranging from graphic design to publishing through to the curation of events and exhibitions. The firm’s combination of diferent, complementary areas of expertise and its ability to design for living spaces on diferent scales makes it an integrated team, capable of handling every aspect of the project’s composition and structure. Major works include the Town Library at Nembro (Bergamo, Italy), the UBPA B3-2 Pavilion World Expo 2010, the GEL, Green Energy Laboratory in Shanghai, the Antinori Wine Cellar at San Casciano (Florence, Italy), the Yanqing Grape Expo in Beijing and the Liling World Ceramic Art City in Changsha, China. Marco Casamonti has designed the Terreria modular bookcase for Moroso and LaCucina, intended to overturn the commonplace criteria for the organisation of space within the home, for Antonio Lup
We design for others, and this ethical dimension of the project is what must guide us, and it is an extraordinary dimension: you (architect) do something that will serve the lives of others
