Work environment in architecture: an interview with Andrea Zamboni

Work environment in architecture: an interview with Andrea Zamboni by Isabela Ramos de Oliveira

Andrea Zamboni is an Italian Ph. D architect with an office based in Reggio Emilia. From 2013 to 2017, he was part of the Study Center of Domus magazine. He is also a professor, teaching mainly at the University of Bologna.

During his lecture at the Architecture for Heritage course, his context-aware intervention projects drew a lot of attention from the students. During his lecture, he also mentioned that, when asked about his favorite project, he always answered that it is his own studio, but was not talking only about architecture. This particular comment sparked curiosity in Isabela Ramos de Oliveira, a recent graduate from the University of Brasília, to know more in depth about how Andrea Zamboni conducted his office, which led to the following interview.

I: Why and when did you decide to open your practice?

A: Actually, the office was founded when I was born in 1974 by my father, with a focus on urban design and public buildings. My father was already in the heritage field, had restored two important palaces, and was starting an industrial reconversion to a dance center. When I graduated, we decided to join forces. We decided to push on this portfolio and this approach since it was clear to us that the city shouldn’t grow, but should be transformed from the inside. Our core business is working on the preexistences and trying to reuse what we have, but it is not the only thing we do, we also do new buildings. It is very typical of our approach to work with very small things, like exhibition designs, or big projects, like a university campus, combining small with big. Attention to the territory, attention to the people, attention to the environment and the urban tissue, the history, the fact that every stone has a story to tell you and you just have to listen to these elements and let them play.

I: What is the most important thing to do to create a good work environment for architecture?

A: When someone asks me what my favorite project is, I respond that it is our office. Not the building but the way of working, the team, the atmosphere. This is partly because I have also been teaching at the University for more than 20 years. What I do at the University is the same activity I do in the office and also the opposite. This means that I work in teams, in general, it is not only me deciding things, we decide with the team. We decide after many proofs, many models (3D printed, digital model, BIM), to arrive at the best solution for a project. There is not a precise method I have to teach, what I teach is the atmosphere you can create so that the ideas can grow from the working method. Sometimes I have the idea, sometimes one collaborator has the idea, and the best idea is developed. Also, during the construction things change; for example, the Capanonne 15 was supposed to be a space for research innovation, and when we opened the site they changed it to a university venue, so the architectural form was the same, but what was supposed to be a place for workers became a place for students.

I: How much impact does the research aspect of the architecture have on the daily routine of the studio? How do you balance the university with the practice? And do you think one helps the other?

A: To me, the time spread in percentage is 80% to project and construction site, the rest is spread between teaching at the university, the relationship with the students, laboratory, and research to make publications that is another realm than the university. So, I have three jackets now, but in the end, they are one because, in general, what I do for the publications is the research applied to certain topics that we face in the profession as well. At the same time, it is the same topic I teach to my students doing projects at the university.

I like it when research becomes a publication and the publication opens the way to a real project. At the same time, sometimes the opposite also happens, the project becomes a publication to tell people what you have done within the project. I’m very happy when this happens. I’m actually preparing a publication that will contain three of our last major projects that had to do with pre-existences, looking at what was the intention behind/beyond the project after we have completed it. I need this part, in fact, I’m not able to say if I prefer making projects to make books or making books to make projects.

Also, the time at Domus was an intense 4-year period. Nicola Di Battista, the former director of Domus, invited me to be part of the study center. I was working for him in Rome immediately after I had got my degree at his architectural atelier. When he became the director, he applied his approach to the magazine and asked me and three colleagues to bring our point of view as architects into the magazine. This was an important period for me because it was the moment when I understood how research and profession are the same thing and you can do a magazine like a project.

I: How do you get to the projects? Do you do competitions, do you get invited to them? You do the research first and then people invite you?

A: When we joined forces 15 years ago, we started with a lot of competitions - that was a way to also explore new topics or try to apply things my father had done to potentially different areas of our city. But what we discovered is that competitions in Italy hardly become built projects, and after a really intense period, after we got some awards and some prizes, we understood that we had to enter more concretely into the profession. Back then, we received some public commissions, in particular Chiostri of San Pietro. It was the moment we understood exactly what we were interested in, to continue our research and at the same time bring on an idea of architecture to renovate heritage. In the beginning, we devoted 80% of our time to competitions and 20% to construction, and now it is totally reversed. In the last 5 years, we only participated in competitions to which we were invited.