Entirely dedicated to the new plant and headquarters of Pratic designed by the GEZA (architects Stefano Gri and Piero Zucchi), the book published by Silvana Editoriale offers an original interpretation of the work through the observations of Mario Carpo and extensive photographic documentation by Fernando Guerra. 

In his commentary on the work, Mario Carpo focuses on the theme of precision, unusual in contemporary architectural production in Italy. “Seen from afar, the Pratic Headquarters by Gri and Zucchi evoke the slick technological expression and the smooth appearance of the best works of the postwar international style. A deceptive easiness from the start, since the seemingly lightweight design expressed in the form of a curtain wall facade of the time was often the result of a titanic effort on the part of the architects, engineers, and builders--as well as of the clients and users, since the curtain walls of the 1950s and 1960s were expensive and malfunctioned easily. [...] From up close, the complex for the Pratic Headquarters by GEZA is anything but easy and light. Anomalies and surprises appear, literally, at every corner. The suspended beam on the south facade of the office building, that in the beautiful and purposely deceptive photographs by Fernando Guerra looks like an out of scale band inscribed in a Richard Neutra-like curtain wall, is in fact a giant cantilevered shelf. The solution is a response to the need for sunshade, but seen from the west side of the office wing the beam exhibits, almost brutally, the intricated building complexity of the roof and facade. [...] The image of precision may seem easy and light, but the quest for precision is always arduous: makers and artists often remind us that nothing is more difficult than the appearance of simplicity.” 

Theme for the ninth edition of the BEYOND MEDIA festival, curated by Marco Brizzi, is VISIONS.

"It is a sort of invitation to an eye-examination, just like the effective graphic image conceived by Gianni Sinni, aimed directly at contemporary architecture.  It seems that, in the last few years, contemporary architects have lost their ability to pursue grand visions and to construct a broad outlook that engages complex transformations of the built environment. They are unable to construct thoughts and a conscience beyond that which is usual, empirical, and visible. It is also true that the massive production and consumption of architectural images has resulted in a greater proximity to design issues by the general public. In the era of global communications, the representation of projects expresses an increasing tendency to develop new capacities to elaborate its very realm of action and to determine new systems of relations, while heading towards something that can be interpreted as a renewal of those persuasive intents that were part of humanistic representationalism. However, at the same time, those images, which are often so autonomous as to seem disassociated from representation, have altered the way people conceive of architecture; hence they seem to have affected the ability and the opportunity to generate visions, and hence theories, that are deeply rooted in our time and, at the same time, receptive to new, possible scenarios."

Publication year: 2009; paperback; 210x270 mm; pp. 264; 300 color illustrations (English).

Here below you may browse through some pages of VISIONS.

Considered one of the leading architects in American experimental architecture, Eric Owen Moss is also one of the most interesting figures in the contemporary international debate.

The boldness of his projects, the way in which they allow for contingencies and leave space for the occurrence of a new, provisional order, and his profound desire to always put himself to the test and to constantly look for possible cultural cross-fertilisations allow Moss to put into practice what he provocatively defines as the Penelope theory of architecture: like Odysseus’s faithful wife, who at night undid the shroud she wove during the day, so is the architect who, when he designs, makes something and dismantles it simultaneously.

We can consider the series of constructions he completed in Culver City as one of the most successful experiments in building the contemporary city piece by piece, and surely one of the urban planning attempts which best relates to its original context.

From Culver City, Eric Moss has been able to slowly emerge at the end of the 1990s and to develop a series of projects in other American and European locations. This volume presents his long and intense voyage that has always been deeply rooted in advanced experimentation and unconventional progress.

Publication year: 2006; paperback; 170x220 mm; pp. 96; 130 color illustrations (Italian and English).

S(E)OUL SCAPE is the exhibition that recounts the outcomes of the urban and architectural transformation that involved South Korea in the last years. After a long period of dictatorship, Korea is today at the center of a unique and unprecedented process of economic, social and cultural development which is characterizing the role of this country in the contemporary world.

Curated by Francisco Sanin and organized by Image, the S(E)OUL SCAPE exhibition identifies in the work of six among the most well known Korean architects -Chung Guyon, Joh Sung-yong, Kim Young-joon, Min Hyun-sik, Seung H-sang, Yi Jong-ho- a program that persistently reveals itself in the culture, in teaching, in the theoretical research that accompanies the daily architectural practice.

Promoted by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Rome, the DARC and the MAXXI and supported by ING, the Netherlands Architectural Fund and NAi Netherlands Architecture Institute, the HOLLAND-ITALY exhibition, curated by Gabriele Mastrigli and organized by Image, is conceived of as a "match" in which two teams, Holland and Italy, will bring 10 works of architecture to the field, 5 on each side.

The Dutch team lines up Atelier Kempe Thill, Crimson, NL Architects, Onix and Powerhouse Company; the Italian team presents baukuh, Dogma, gruppo A12, IaN+ and Beniamino Servino. Ten works of architecture are to face one another on a newly devised platform for discussion and exchange. The exhibit has 5 categories to be "played on the field": House, Pavilion, Context, Infrastructure, and City. Every one of these categories will be addressed by one Dutch group and one Italian group: the House category will be played by Powerhouse Company and Beniamino Servino, for the Pavilion, we'll see Atelier Kempe Thill and gruppo A12, Context will match up ONIX and Baukuh, Infrastructure will be handled by NL Architects and IaN+, and City will show the ability of Crimson and Dogma.

A new agenda for Italian and Dutch architecture. An alternation between pragmatism and theory marks the research of these two groups presenting at the exhibit.

The Treasure Islands, regional campus for contemporary culture, is a project conceived and organized by Image, and promoted by the Region of Tuscany, with the objective of encouraging a sensibility for contemporary architectural research in the territory while also respecting the landscape and the history of the cities involved.

The project, curated by Paola Bortolotti and Marco Brizzi, and coordinated by Franco Filippini, involved eight Municipalities (Capoliveri, Lastra a Signa, Peccioli, Poggio a Caiano, Prato, Rio nell'Elba, San Gimignano, San Giovanni Valdarno) and five Provinces in seven architectural design workshops, each lasting a week.

The goals of the workshops were to elaborate concepts and ideas for the spatial qualification of specific areas in the eight cities. The workshops, led by a selection of emerging Italian architects, took place between October and November 2006 and saw the participation of 85 young designers coming from all over Italy. In each municipality, a theme and a site were chosen. The overall objective was to describe new visions that would enhance these sites and establish connections between the past and the future.

The Treasure Islands. A workshop as wide as Tuscany.

Publication year: 2006; paperback; 170x240 mm; pp. 96; 180 color illustrations (Italian and English).

Theme for the eighth edition of BEYOND MEDIA, curated by Marco Brizzi, is SCRIPT.

"How can architecture today talk about itself? What narrative forms are most suitable to convey design ideas, to express projects and to disclose them to the public? How does design structure its languages and how does it express the culture of our times by means of a contemporary way of writing? Which paths do emerging creatives follow in order to approach the new modes of expression which are made possible by the digital tools and by the new media?"

SCRIPT is a reflection on the different kinds of "writings" of the architectural project. Technological innovations and the development of the media of communication have influenced the ways we "script" architecture, enriching them and sometimes making them more complex but also more instantaneous, with all the negative and positive repercussions this entails. SCRIPT focuses on the variegated "fictional woods" through which contemporary architecture can express and describe itself, offering itself as a scenario for different actions and representations.

The wide, articulated and complex theme proposed for the 2005 edition of the BEYOND MEDIA festival couldn't do without the involvement of a diverse expertise: not only are well-known architects and designers involved in the talks and discussions, but also journalists, writers, cartoonists, illustrators, graphic artists, photographers, critics, videomakers, visual designers.

Publication year: 2006; paperback; 170x220 mm; pp. 160; 150 color illustrations (English).

This second edition of the SPOT ON SCHOOLS exhibition, curated by Paola Giaconia, displays, through the experience of the students and of the instructors, how the new technologies influence the various phases of a design, starting from the very act of creative conception.

The exhibition, part of the BEYOND MEDIA festival in Florence, Italy, explores the involvement of a wide and international selection of top schools of architecture and design in the topic of the new media of communication.

The scenario is very vast, says the curator Paola Giaconia, and is characterized by continuous straying beyond the boundaries of a single discipline, so that the architectural language can confront itself with other realities and enrich the architectural discourse with stimuli and practices that return to the didactic sphere an identity that is but conformable and stereotypical. The heterogeneous modes of approaching the architectural project, as well as the variety of instruments and techniques, and the contradictions which belong to the various methods adopted by the schools, make SPOT ON SCHOOLS a very lively and vibrant scenario, rich in ideas, directions and methodologies.

With an introduction by Paola Giaconia, the volume presents courses and projects students of the following architecture schools:
- Architectural Association (London, UK);
- Carnegie Mellon University, School of Architecture (Pittsburgh, PA, USA) ;
- Clemson University, School of Architecture (Clemson, SC, USA);
- Columbia University, GSAPP (New York, NY, USA);
- ETH Zurich, Faculty of Architecture (Zurich, Switzerland);
- Fabrica (Catena di Villorba, Italy);
- Hosei University (Tokyo, Japan);
- Instituto Superior Tcnico (Lisbon, Portugal);
- Miami University (Oxford, OH, USA);
- NABA (Milan, Italy);
- National Chiao Tung University College of Architecture (Hsinchu, Taiwan);
- Pratt Institute (Brooklyn, NY, USA);
- Princeton University (Princeton, NJ, USA);
- SCI-Arc, Southern California Institute of Architecture (Los Angeles, California, USA);
- UC Berkeley, Department of Architecture, College of Environmental Design (California, USA);
- Università "La Sapienza", Prima Facolt di Architettura "Ludovico Quaroni" (Roma, Italia);
- University of Applied Arts Vienna (Vienna, Austria).

Publication year: 2005; paperback; 170x220 mm; pp. 96; 130 color illustrations (English).

Theme for the seventh edition of BEYOND MEDIA, curated by Marco Brizzi, is INTIMACY.

Inhabited spaces are in search of new definitions. Domestic walls no longer define environments of intimacy or security, nor do they guarantee privacy. At times, conditions of familiarity and intimacy can be found in public spaces, or near communication devices that are adapted as "customised" environmental configurations. The excess of surveillance and the need for new forms of security and control end up radically reducing personal privacy and ultimately affect the definition of architectural spaces.

This problematic issue, considered in its entirety, provokes a re-examination of the topic that involves many fields and disciplines, especially architecture and communications. It is not by chance that a growing number of studies are being conducted in both of these areas of research. In the past few years BEYOND MEDIA has actively registered the origination and the different evolutionary paths of such studies.

All of this attests the necessity to retrace the different possible habitation conditions that can be found within media systems.

According to which modalities and within which boundaries does today's domestic dimension of the inhabited space tend to configure itself?  What are the limits and the forms, whether spontaneous or induced, of the public realm's dimension?

BEYOND MEDIA. INTIMACY proposes to overturn the conventional approaches to architecture and will undertake points of view that are intrinsic to its very means of communication. Visitors to the exhibition will be lead to observe the inhabited space, the city and its territory starting with an inquiry regarding the roles of films and television. They will then be conducted through the intricate workings of satellite devices, information networks, mobile communication, instruments of control and surveillance, as to explore these elements and their effects on the definitions of inhabited space.

Publication year: 2004; paperback; 170x220 mm; pp. 160; 150 color illustrations (Italian and English).

The SPOT ON SCHOOLS exhibition, curated by Paola Giaconia, offers a first survey of the most distinguished schools of architecture in the world that explored inventive design strategies, facilitated by new technologies, and investigated the ways in which digital media have informed the conception and production of architecture.

It is an exploration of the new ranges of architectural communication that digital media have made available; an investigation of how digital instruments are transforming the modes by which architects can conceive and communicate their designs and of how technology and mass media are shaping their representations; a presentation and discussion of the state-of-the-art and cutting-edge researches in the field. SPOT ON SCHOOLS is a wide though preliminary investigation, aimed at a changing international panorama that is in full development and is not afraid to reveal its heterogeneity and as far as the most radical and extreme cases are concerned even its indeterminateness. An agenda for future investigations.

With the SPOT ON SCHOOLS exhibition the BEYOND MEDIA festival, organized by Image, starts a wide-ranging survey of the research work carried out at the international level on the relationship between architecture and the media.

With an introduction by Paola Giaconia, the volume presents courses and projects students of the following architecture schools:
- The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL (London, UK);
- Clemson University, School of Architecture (Clemson, SC, USA);
- Columbia University, GSAPP (New York, USA);
- ESA Ecole Spéciale d'Architecture (Paris, France);
- ETS Escola Tècnica i Superior dArquitectura La Salle (Barcelona, Spain);
- Georgia Tech College of Architecture (Atlanta, Georgia, USA);
- Interaction Design Institute (Ivrea, Italy);
- KHM Kunsthochschule fr Medien K ln (Kln, Deutschland);
- National Chiao Tung University College of Architecture (Hsinchu, Taiwan);
- RMIT University, SIAL Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory (Melbourne, Australia);
- SCI-Arc, Southern California Institute of Architecture (Los Angeles, California, USA);
- TU Delft, Faculty of Architecture (The Netherrlands);
- UC Berkeley, Department of Architecture, College of Environmental Design (California, USA);
- UCLA, A+UD, Department of Architecture and Urban Design (Los Angeles, California, USA);
- UCLA, Department of Design | Media Arts (Los Angeles, California, USA);
- UC San Diego, CRCA (San Diego, California, USA);
- Università di Camerino, Facolt di Architettura di Ascoli Piceno, EIDOLAB (Camerino, Italy);
- Università "La Sapienza", Prima Facolt di Architettura "Ludovico Quaroni" (Roma, Italy);
- University of Auckland School of Architecture (Auckland, New Zealand).

Publication year: 2003; paperback; 170x220 mm; pp. 96; 125 color illustrations (English).