Materials, Places and Origins: Understanding intimacy, people and nature with Mauro Marinelli from Franzosomarinelli
Materials, Places and Origins: Understanding intimacy, people and nature with Mauro Marinelli of Franzosomarinelli. Questions curated by Giulia Papa, Lorenzo Fortunato and Leah Hoepelman.
Written by Leah Hoepelman
In an era dominated by technology, glass, steel, and digital tools, it is increasingly rare—and maybe even radical—to stand out by returning to the basics. Basics being roughness, material honesty, and the physicality of the natural world; a conceptual framework through which Franzosomarinelli has carved a distinct architectural identity.
“Architecture is a physical experience. Not abstraction, not a story—physical.”
This statement captures the core of Mauro Marinelli’s practice. As principal and co-founder of Franzosomarinelli, he leads a firm grounded in the belief that architecture begins not simply with a place, but with the materials of such place. In their work, material is not just a finishing layer decided in the construction development of a project; it is the generator of form, atmosphere, sequence, and emotion.
Intimacy Through Materiality
Across their projects—regardless of scale, typology, or context—there is such a strong palpable sense of intimacy. Even in open public spaces, Franzosomarinelli seeks to evoke closeness, warmth, and a personal encounter with architecture, and the surfaces of architecture itself.
This intimacy emerges from their process: they begin with materials found in the immediate context, and allow those materials to propose the direction and shapes of the design. Stone, timber, soil, topography or whichever is found—each becomes a narrative thread that leads to a built form, and an experience-filled space.
Marinelli explains: “This generates a relationship with the context, and then people will arrive. People will form relationships as well.”
Their design approach fosters connections at multiple levels: between person and material, person and landscape, and person and community. When asked how they balance openness and intimacy in public space—two conditions often at odds—Marinelli responded:
“We avoid doing things too literal, because it is less fascinating… Architecture and open space should be flexible: you find a solution, but you also let people create their own.”
The Mountain as a Cultural Landscape
Many of Franzosomarinelli’s works sit in mountain regions, remote towns, or alpine landscapes far removed from the dense urban life most of us are accustomed today. This raises a fundamental question: Should people return to the mountains? And if so, how should architecture frame the relationship between humans and nature?
Surprisingly, Marinelli challenges the assumption behind the question:
“In the Alps, nature doesn’t exist… How do you actually define nature? The stones, shapes, and fields you see are usually manipulated by humans. Natural and artificial are melting together.”
This perspective reframes alpine landscapes not as untouched wilderness, but as cultural landscapes—shaped and reshaped by centuries of human labor. The distinction between “natural” and “artificial” becomes blurred, and actually allows architecture to navigate that complexity.
For Marinelli, the task is not to replicate nature nor to dominate it, but to balance these conditions, acknowledging the hybrid reality that mountains represent.
Public Space Between the Individual and the Collective
Just as the natural and artificial blend in the Alps, so do the public and the private in the urban settings. Despite the context, public space must respond fluidly to drastically different scales of occupation. Here lies one of the main challenges and also the great power behind these typologies; sometimes the design is only used by one, and other times; by thousands.
“You never know the power of architecture,” Marinelli reflects. “Give value to existing buildings and provide spaces for gathering. Public space can be a tool to bring people together—an architectural device to care for.”
Here, public space becomes an instrument of social cohesion. It is not simply a void between buildings, but a constructed opportunity for encounter, belonging, and community. Even in landscapes marked by isolation, architecture can serve as a catalyst for collective life.
Towards a More Physical, Grounded Architecture
Marinelli’s reflections reveal a philosophy that challenges both technological abstraction and overly romanticized ideas of nature. His work asks us to reconsider where architecture begins—not with digital models or vague conceptual diagrams, but with the physical reality of material, with the palpable layers of the site, the deep history of landscapes, and the human need for connection.
Franzosomarinelli’s approach suggests that in a world rushing toward the virtual, the truly contemporary gesture may be to re-embrace the physical. To design spaces that are flexible yet intimate, contextual yet open, grounded yet inviting.
And ultimately, to create architecture that does not impose complex and far-fetched narratives, but invites people to form their own—through their senses: touch, presence, material, and place.