AM ALESSANDRO MAGLIANI
sample portfolio
ALESSANDRO MAGLIANI Address: 259 Hackney Road, London E26ED Mobile: +44 7432007223 Email: alessandro.magliani@gmail.com Website: 3flab.cargocollective.com EDUCATION: 2012 - 2018
AA Dipl. - ARB/RIBA Part II Architectural Association, London, UK -Nominated For RIBA Bronze Medal (September 2015) -Published on Blueprint Magazine (October 2015) -Mentioned on the Architect’s Journal (June 2015)
2011 - 2012
Foundation Course Architectural Association London, UK
2007 - 2011
Diploma di Maturità Liceo Classico Giuseppe Parini Milan, Italy
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE: March 2016 - June 2016
Internship, Atelier Bow Wow, Tokyo, JP Worked on several designs in Japan and abroad. Tasks included model making, drawing in CAD and design development.
September 2015 - March 2016
Internship, Kuehn Malvezzi GmbH, Berlin, DE Worked on several competitions for projects based in Germany and Switzerland. Also helped in the exhibition design for ‘Models of the House of One’ for the Chicago Biennial.
September 2013 - Present
Art Director, Three Fingerz Musique ltd., London, UK Curated the image of the record label, including graphic works for vinyl releases and 1:1 installations for events. Coordinated the distribution of two EP releases in Berlin, London and Milan.
June 2014 - August 2014
Summer Internship, Uli Wagner LLC, New York, USA Modelled and designed bits of several projects, including a showroom and a storefront for Agnona in Milan, and early design phases of a facade for a Proenza Schouler shop in Bangkok.
SOFTWARE, LANGUAGES, HOBBIES Experienced: AutoCad, Rhinoceros, VectorWorks, Adobe Creative Suite,SketchUp, C4d Intermediate: 3DS Max, Maya, Zbrush Italian - Mother tongue English - Fluent Spanish - Intermediate German - Intermediate Hobbies: Painting, Playing Drums, Skiing
Portfolio Contents: Objects Against the Canon (2018) A Second Life (2013) Parasite Chair (2013) The City of Morphologies (2015) Urban Frameworks (2014) Work Experience: Kuehn Malvezzi Work Experience: Atelier Bow Wow Personal Work: Posters Personal Work: 3f.Lab Design for an Itinerant Exhibition (2018) 52! (2017)
Objects Against the Canon (2018) The project is focused on the transformation of architectural form extracted from several urban sites into a series of itinerant objects, targeting the static and restrictive idea of the architectural ‘canon’. Buildings that are part of the historical tradition of several Italian cities are selected and gradually taken apart, to form a series of new ensembles, which are independent from their original sites, and are free to roam in and out of the city to interact with radically different contexts. Once they reach a different setting, the objects are able to deploy and expand into temporary exhibitions that show the original buildings samples in alternative, anti-hierarchical layouts. The mobility of the objects reflects a sense of precariousness and instability that characterizes contemporary Italy, which the architectural scene has not yet been able to adequately absorb and express. The project is ultimately an invitation to look at the existing form of our cities as a rich mining ground, that can be used freely to sample existing pieces of architecture in order to create new forms and assemblages within fluid and adaptable disciplinary frameworks. In this page: Venice deconstructs itself into a series of floating architectural assembles (left) and Ca d’Oro during the deconstruction stage (top right).
Canon vs. Anti-Canon The drawings show the disciplinary context of the project. The city is divided in two parts, on one hand the city of the canon (white) is built on a heavy and indexical use of diagrams, which bring to an endless repetition of forms. On the other hand, the city of the objects (black) represents a more ancestral and intuitive side of the discipline, that ties it with the world of art and with broader cultural references, that challenge the autonomy of the white city. In the lower sequence the objects are represented as entities that are able to move in and out of their context, at times absorbing parts of it, at others hovering on top of it. The mobility of the objects and their ambivalent relationship to context are the central defining themes of the project.
Cart 1 Origin: Milan Ca’ Brutta Corner
Cart 2 Origin: Venice Ca d’Oro
Siteless Architecture Crash score - tracking parts of Milan and Venice across the northern Italian landscape, after they have left the city (left) Milanese carts and Venetian floats. A series of Itinerant architectural pieces, which contain parts of the canonical architecture of their city of origin. (top and bottom right). Meta-Italian landscape. The site in which the project takes place is an interstitial space between different cities.
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Scene 2
Scene 3 Scene 5
St. Marks Basilica: Surfaces and elements of Display
Palazzo Ducale: Tripartite Lightweight Facade
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Tripartite Plan with inner court.
San Marco: Repetiton of Facade elements
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St Mark’s Basin: Objects as visual cues on a surface
Interior/ exterior Mosaic Surface
Facade Pattern
Court Pattern
Inner Dome Construction
Sansovino Lacing of Orders.
Inner Stairs
Perforated Surface
Wooden Structure Activation
Architecture as a Journey Clip-on Facade
Entrance Columnade
Parts of the city go through a process that transforms them into movable units. In Venice, the main formal carachteristics of the st. Mark’s basin get reinterpreted and loaded onto a ship, ready to sail to foreign waters. In Milan, Caccia Dominioni’s house transforms itself into a cart that is able to leave the city and expand itself, to show the original building into a new, horizontal and anti-hierarchical layout.
A Second Life (2013) First year studio conversion of another student’s design of a self storage into a series of private apartments. A series of small apartments designed around inner courts were raised from the ground to enhance the building’s mute appearance. The compartments of the former self storage are reflected by the interior layout of the building, which is designed through a regular column grid. The apartments have a small footprint and are all split on two floors, allowing for different levels of privacy.
Parasite Chair (2013) First year studio - design for a chair that attaches to its user and forces him/her to exercise. The design of the chair is an interpretation of anatomical parts of the body, such as the spine and the hips, modelled and carved out of soft wood.
The city of Morphologies (2015) The project investigates a possible exchange between real cities and their disciplinary projections. I exaggerate the vision of a disciplinary city driven by morphological principles rather than social or political forces. The project is deeply rooted in Berlin and its peculiar formal history. Subjected to constant disciplinary projections, Berlin is facing an identity crisis and a formal alienation. My project proposes to accomodate Berlin’s multiple personalities and conceptual schemes into a new total yet heterogeneous model. This city is a result of sampling, abstraction and reconfiguration of real blocks through the use of morphological themes, which are the key channels that connect the two cities. I combine retroactive readings with speculative ones, while introducing new forces, such as the ‘swamp’ - a destabilizing entropic quality of the contemporary city. The thematic blocks and infrastructures are collapsed into one paradoxical urban map, that allows for the previous oppositions, contradictions ans schisms to create new associations.
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The thematic Blocks
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Theme of Subtle Remix (1): a series of formal elements extracted from key sites within the city are taken and repeated to form a series of blocks that express the Idea of a remix of formal samples. Theme of Conflicting Juxtaposition (2): this theme is built on a fictional opposition, that is based on real conditions found in the city: the opposition between flat, massive fire walls and lightweight structures.
The Thematic Blocks The Thematic Blocks 1. Theme of Continuous blocks with an interrupted perimeter 1. Theme of Continuous Interruption: blocksInterruption: with an interrupted perimeter ThemeBlocks of Subtle Remix:of Blocks composed 2: Theme of Subtle2: Remix: composed remixed samplesof remixed samples 3: Theme of Absorbed Juxtapositions: A fictional between solid elements vs. fractile juxtapositions 3: Theme of Absorbed Juxtapositions: A fictional battle between solidbattle elements vs. fractile juxtapositions (3): Theme built
Theme of Continuous Interruption around the formal condition of a perimeter block interrupted by one or more external elements.
In the next page: a host block gets simultaneously attacked by three themes, which start to influence each other (1). Berlin as an analogous city, torn between fixed schemes and fluid forces.
Urban Frameworks (2014) A design project for a flexible mixed development in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. A system of walls and beams is used to create spaces suited for a flexible appropriation. Located along one of HCMC’s main canals, the project was created as a response to a developing city that requires a constant flexibility of spaces. The walls are laid out in several configurations, which allow for different programmatic appropriations. Larger ones can be used for small scale industrial plots, while smaller ones are intended as a mix of residential and commercial units.
60 m ² 53 m ² 53 m ²
Kuehn Malvezzi - Schadowstrasse
78 m ²
A winning competiton entry for a mixed use building in Berlin’s Mitte neighbourhood. The southern corner of the building acts both as a focal point and as a way for residents and users to peek into nearby Unter den Linden, Berlin’s famous central boulevard.
Kuehn Malvezzi - Polyterrasse Zurich Competition entry for a new food hall and sports center for the ETH in Zurich. The design was developed in order to emphasize the role of the terrace as a meeting point, while providing a centralized circulation system that connected the terrace with the underground sports centre.
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Atelier Bow Wow - Studio Models Series of models realized during the internship period in Tokyo. Most of the projects were developed exclusively through these detailed scale models.
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1. Guesthouse in Kyoto 2. Rice fields office 3. Rural house study 4. Internal layout study 5. Rural guesthouse
Atelier Bow Wow - Jaures competition Competition entry for a housing scheme in Paris, that included a central bar building, flanked by smaller residential units, located within the borders of an existing block.
AA Student Forum Posters and Logo A series of posters realized for the AA student forum, to advertise different events involving the school community at the AA. Bold typography and various backgrounds were used to stand out amongst the crowded message boards around the school.
3F.LAB This page contains a series of works developed as graphic outputs for the London based record label Three Fingerz Musique. Top left: cover artwork for Huerta - Am ende EP. Top right: Printed EP sleeve and center with logo. Bottom: series of works realized for an exhibition centered around classic car prototypes.
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Visionari - Prophets of Form This project was developed to respond to a commission, which gave me the opportunity to directly test some of the principles that I was researching in my 5th year studio project. After rejecting the idea of a more traditional and static exhibition, it was proposed that it could be mounted on a trailer and attached to a scooter, in order to reach a broader audience across the city. This lead to the design of a series of panels that could be easily taken apart and put back together. The exhibition, which was centered on the design of classic cars, travelled around Milan during the course of one day, stopping and expanding in several locations across the city Sistema a incastro (sezione alla base)
52! This project is about using fragments in order to create a series of heterogeneous architectural landscapes. Using Persian miniatures as ideal examples of synthetic drawings , which are able to convey different moments of a story within a single image, I started to experiment with ways to graphically connect different fragments to create a single image. The idea of mixing fragments was further developed by creating a set of playing cards that could be used to play different games, thus creating a series of heterogeneous card landscapes on the game table. In this page: a crowded miniature workshop ( far left), the suit of gardens (top), miniature drawing (left).
Table landscape after a game of Machiavelli. City, desert, interiors and gardens are mixed on the table (top left). City suit (Bottom) Interiors, desert and infrastructures are mixed into a single, central perspective view (top right) A foldable miniature depicting parts of a city in different views, connected through parallel projection shifts (left).