AMAA: Marcello Galiotto and Alessandra Rampazzo

The Department of Architecture welcomes Marcello Galiotto and Alessandra Rampazzo of AMAA for their lecture, "Seemingly Simple." The concept of the Seemingly Simple embraces the comprehensive research and frames the process, focusing on the attention to tradition, historical memory, the mutual influence of the arts, the craftsmanship involved in the use of materials. These subjects seem to strengthen a deep connection with the regional context and with its renowned references, being the starting point of each individual project which has the ambitious intention to constitute a new stratification in addition to the complex, existing memory of the territory.

It is a matter of applying the same attention and care normally reserved for the historic city to the layered context of the suburbs and the diffuse city that characterizes the territory in which the firm operates the most.

A fragmented reality –aggregated and often the result of additions and modifications dictated by the needs– that hides or has incorporated the values of tradition and memory of even the recent past. Intervening in these places has as its primary objective the identification of those values that can guarantee new opportunities for contemporary planning. The temporal scan thus becomes an opportunity to rethink an ever-new spatiality, where the used approach modifies accordingly to the different architectural solutions adopted in ages.

Moreover, built architecture is the result of a complex process, not unique, never the same nor linear, based on continuous critical work on the available design options. A specific way of working, this one, based on the primary role of the Idea in the evolution of the project. A process that maintains the essence of the Idea by gradually specifying itself until the realization, through the synthesis of a background made of models, references, words and contributions from other disciplines, also inserted in the context of history and memory with its stratifications. The moment of construction finally gives it the necessary materiality.

Images and drawings are put together uninterruptedly offering cause for reflection on the formal outcome achieved by AMAA so far. Loose thoughts, open to a continuously evolving future, which is not familiar with the word “ending”: the conclusion of a process does not necessarily lead to a definite end. Rather, it may result in new developments.

AMAA was founded in Venice in 2012 by Marcello Galiotto and Alessandra Rampazzo based on their working experience alongside Massimo Carmassi and Sou Fujimoto. The professional practice has always been combined with academic research and with an uninterrupted collaboration with academic institutions. Marcello Galiotto and Alessandra Rampazzo both graduated from Iuav in 2010 and completed their PhD in Architectural Design (Galiotto, 2015) and History of Architecture (Rampazzo, 2017). Their academic collaborations include Iuav University, Politecnico di Milano, University of Genova, HFT Stuttgart Technology University of Applied Sciences. They are invited to hold lectures and seminars at leading universities, among which Iowa State University of Science and Technology, Kent State University and Universidade do Minho. In 2015 AMAA established AMAA workshop in Arzignano (VI).

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