PISTOIA – The difficulty of carrying out research in architecture in the academic world and, above all, the increasingly necessary tendency of the profession to support the inversion of the city-countryside relationship, making the latter once again the protagonist.
This is the warning that architect Marco Casamonti, founder of the international studio Archea and professor of architecture at the University of Genoa, launches during the second day of Meet Arch, a three-day advanced training workshop in architecture and design, now in its third edition, scheduled from 14 to 16 June at the Pistoia Nursery Park of Vannucci Piante. Tomorrow, Sunday 16 June, lectio magistralis by the architect Carlos Gonzalvo, from the international studio Beta Architecture.
“In our universities – underlines Casamonti – we are unable to train the professionals of the future well, they have become exam factories. Advanced research used to be in universities, now the situation has evolved into a sort of ‘plus’ high school, at least for some faculties. In doing so, the research part was weakened a bit and today there is a need to take advanced know-how from companies”. The profession’s relationship with nature was also explored in depth.
“In the recent past we have overwhelmed nature, urbanising, just to give an example close to us, the entire area from Milan to Venice. We have probably built too much, and now we have to naturalize our territories again. In the city-country relationship we must reverse the trend.”
The objective of this edition of Meet Arch is to develop a final manifesto, the result of a synthesis of the works, conceived and produced by 30 professionals under 35 from internationally renowned companies. A concentration of multidisciplinary experiences coming from studios such as: Zaha Hadid Architects, OMA, MIR, BIG Architects, Atelier Jean Nouvel, Kengo Kuma, SANAA, Sou Fujimoto Architects, Archea Associati, Stefano Boeri Architetti, Renzo Piano Building Workshop, Mario Cucinella Architects , Diorama, Mecanoo, MVRDV, Patricia Urquiola, and many others.
Already since the second edition, the green partner of Meet Arch is Vannucci Piante, world leader in the production of ornamental outdoor plants.
