Archive for January, 2023

ATOMAA presents at Platform Best Italian Future Living Design Selection

Posted by Philip Kolevsohn

On the 29th of November 2022, in the magnificent setting of the Belvedere Jannacci, located on the 31st floor of the Pirelli Skyscraper in Milan, the Best Italian Future Living Design Selection event took place, organised by PLATFORM architecture and design in collaboration with SIEMENS Home Appliances.

50 Italian architecture and interior design studios were selected to provide their personal vision of the contemporary design of new hybrid living spaces. During the event, all invited designers took turns on stage, recounting their vision in a short speech.

"Interior architecture in Italy has been throughout the past century one of the freest and happiest areas of experimentation and research in our design culture that is unparalleled in the rest of the western world for its uniqueness and richness."

"I have been saying for years that a parallel, almost private history of Italian architecture could be written just by using its interior designs, and it would be an exciting tale capable of recounting generations of young designers, excellent craftsmen, dedicated companies and courageous clients. It would be a true insight into the history of our country through its domestic interiors!"

- Luca Molinari

What the pages of this volume recount is a further evolutionary transition, because the sense of freedom and the desire to experiment remain, but the shape of the home and the habits of its inhabitants are changing. Homes are losing the functional and rigid scores of the century just gone by, while the need for flexibility and fluidity in the way we inhabit and experience domestic spaces is leading designers to work on forms of living in which mobility, the invisible presence of household appliances, technological intelligence and widespread sustainability give shape to environments that are more complex and elementary at the same time.

The close relationship between form and function is definitely transforming and leading to a simplification of domestic places that allows everyone to experience the home in a more personal and conscious way. The Italian projects that flow before our eyes have definitively eliminated the separation between kitchen and living, production and social life, privacy and work, because our lives, especially after this long pandemic, have stressed traditional homes so radically that new generation spaces were already beginning to emerge in the work of some of the more visionary architects and developers. Added to this is the urgent need for supports and places that have a clear sustainable and ecological character and are capable of affecting the way we manage energy and consumption responsibly.

We are at the first steps of an important metamorphosis of living and I am certain that Italian architecture will be able to offer important perspectives and projects, capable of helping an environmental and cultural transition that we all urgently need.

Credits & additional content
Video: Salt&Lemon
Event organisers: PLATFORM Architecture and Design
Event publication: Link
Buy the publication: Link
Event sponsor: SIEMENS Home Italia

Home for Readers in Best Italian Future Living Design Selection

Posted by Philip Kolevsohn

What the pages of this volume recount is a further evolutionary transition, because the sense of freedom and the desire to experiment remain, but the shape of the home and the habits of its inhabitants are changing.

Homes are losing the functional and rigid scores of the century just gone by, while the need for flexibility and fluidity in the way we in habit and experience domestic spaces is leading designers to work on forms of living in which mobility, the invisible presence of household appliances, technological intelligence and widespread sustainability give shape to environments that are more complex and elementary at the same time.

We are at the first steps of an important metamorphosos of living and I ma certain that Italian architecture will be able to offer important perspectives and projects, capable of helping an environmental and cultural transition that we all urgently need.

For more content:
View the project: Link
View the publication: Link

Text by: Luca Molinari

House Cinsc in À Vivre Magazine

Posted by Philip Kolevsohn

"THE INCREDIBLE SOBRIETY OF A STONE HOUSE"

A very steep road crosses the mountain to reach a small group of houses perched on a ridge. We are in one of the rare regions spared by mass tourism of the 1950s. Pastures and cultivated fields have given way to dense woods. There, an old stable that has become a ruin, in delicate balance, reserved some surprises for those who were to transform it. Indeed, Andrea Del Pedro Pera, Cesare Galligani and Umberto Maj, founders of the Milanese architecture firm ATOMAA, could not have suspected the presence of a large stone vault and a fireplace on the ground floor, remains of a past residence.

This pass is reactive thanks to the restoration of the old form and the consolidation of the walls, but above all with the development of new places of cohabitation - the kitchen and dining room - at the heart of the existing volume. In order to best serve all rooms of the house spread over the three levels, the architects create a central core of laminated birch plywood that hosts the staircase.

Anxious to integrate the project into its environment, the designers opt for an exterior of stone “where the textures of the walls between old and new intertwine into a single stitch, reconstructed by hand, stone by stone". The interior is more of a wooden box inserted into the stone envelope: floors, walls and ceilings are composed of elements from old floor-boards and deteriorated roof beams, or larch of the valley, when needed. The result, therefore, is that more sober, rigorous, and minimal.

At nearly 1,400 meters above sea level, northwest of the Italian Alps, a ruin typical of the region previously housed cattle and hay. The Milanese architects of ATOMAA transformed it into an elegant contemporary house of great sobriety. And to do this, they use every stone and piece of wood found on site.

ATOMAA transforms a ruined stable into a contemporary house without betraying its past thanks to respect for volumes and materials. The exterior retains its stone body blending with the landscape, while the interior offers a new intimate and warm wooden cocoon.

Reuse is a key element of the project: the walls were built with the stones of the old disused parts, the lintels of the doors and windows with the wood of the old roof; the retaining walls of the terraces as well as the volume of the extension erected from portions of excavated rock.

For more content:
View the project: Link
View the publication: Link

Protected: Pavilion in the Park

Posted by Philip Kolevsohn

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ATOMAA invited to present at the Platform Architecture Festival in Venice

Posted by Philip Kolevsohn

During the summer months of 2021 in Venice, Platform architecture and design organised an important initiative that saw the simultaneous staging of two thematic exhibitions, involving 140 architecture studios from all over the world.

"Best Italian Interior Design" offers an overall of interior design by Italian architects, with no limitation in terms of geography or type (residential, hospitality, retail, etc.); while "Best International Houses" offers a view of the world's places to live through the selection of 70 projects chosen by a scientific committee on the basis of applications from all five continents.

The prestigious location of the event is the Scuola Grande di Santa Maria della Misericordia in Venice. Completely restored in 2015, today the Misericordia is a monumental space where art, history and culture dialogue with the territory, and is an institutional venue for prestigious exhibitions, installations and cultural events.

For each of the two exhibitions, a dedicated volume collecting the selected projects has been published, together with a General Catalogue of Casa Platform Venezia, concerning the partner companies of the event and the cultural initiatives scheduled.

For more content on this project:
View the project: link
View the publication: link
View the presentation: link
Photography by: Marco Cappelletti