PRACTICE BOOK
Gabriele Zanello
Selected works
2014 - present
GABRIELE
Selected works
2014 - present
About me
I completed my master’s degree at Politecnico di Milano in late 2020 with honors. In 2021 I participated in an advanced training course led by Francesca Singer of S A N A A. In early 2022 I became a licensed architect and collaborated with BIG studio. During these years I participate in several international architectural competitions collaborating with architects, designers, landscape architects, psychologists, and more. Since late 2022 I’m professor’s assistant in Politecnico di Milano in master’s degree courses. In april 2023 I founded Collectique Stuido, a design practice spin-off from ZANELLOG Studio + Co, my own architecture practice. In april 2023 we had an exibition at Milan Desi- gn Week with our project re|SEA|rcle.
Index
Casa EDMA, Countryside House, Udine, Italy, 2021-og;
New IUAV Library, Venice, Italy, 2018 (unbuilt); supervision by Prof. Arch. Massimiliano Roca;
COPE, Master’s thesis, Emergency Operations Center, Beledweyne, Somalia, 2020 (unbuilt);
RESIEDENCE, new IED students residence, Milan, Italy, 2019 (unbuilt);
Women’s House, Baghere, Senegal, 2021 (unbuilt);
1 2 3 4 5
Casa EDMA, Countryside House, Udine, Italy 2021-og
As an architect I feel a duty to preserve as much as possible all the land that is not yet consumed. In the context in which I am immersed and in which I work, Central Europe, land consumption is an increasingly important problem that we have to deal with. It is what has prompted me in recent years to follow projects to restore buildings in dilapidated condition, as in this case: the interest was private, but the client was enlightened to follow very clean and precise directions. The ultimate goal was common from the start: to succeed in creating a rural-contemporary space.
New IUAV Library, Venice with Federica Pieri; New IUAV Library, Venice, Italy, 2018 (unbuilt); supervision by Prof. Arch. Massimiliano Roca
This second project is situated within a social, political, and territorial panorama entirely different but as closely related as possible to the needs that architecture must address. The territory of Venice is something incredible, indescribable in its almost complete immobility, as romantic as it is synonymous with condemnation today and in the years to come. The ambition here, too, is to be able to respond comprehensively to the demands of a landscape inherently surrendered to history. Through careful study of recurring conditions, repeated elements applicable to both open spaces and the built environment, an articulated planimetric development capable of interacting with pre-existing conditions has been formulated. Typological and formal investigation led to the reinterpretation of elements that influence and
are influenced by functions and characteristics that are mutually traceable. The semicircular arches of porticoes and warehouses become an element with a new function, that of excavation.
The quest for innovation is concealed in technological choices that reinterpret the use of materials through solutions such as cladding with terracotta or gray stone tiles. The ultimate goal is to draft a project taking into account maintenance costs and the lifespan of the project, without neglecting its adaptability to future conditions that may modify its uses and appearances.
“I am strongly convinced that architecture—the real presence of a building in a place—can redeem the place
from its ‘everywhere.’ It is the place, the first stone to be used in the construction of the external world. It is where the building acquires its uniqueness: where the specificity of architecture emerges and can be understood as its most precious quality. The architect’s responsibility ultimately lies in initiating a dialogue between place and object so that, in the central core of architecture, the place is always found.”
Rafael Moneo, The Other Modernity: Considerations on the Future of Architecture
COPE
Master’s thesis
Emergency Operations Center, Beledweyne, Somalia, 2020 (unbuilt); supervision by Prof. Arch. Massimiliano Roca
COPE
verb [ EN ]
UK /kəʊp/ US /koʊp/
to deal successfully with a difficult situation
Ita Eng
Centro Operativo Per Emergenze Emergency Operation Center
Belet Uen is a city in Somalia that has been brought to its knees in recent years due to continuous flooding caused by incredible rains. In 2019, the displaced in the city alone were more than four hundred thousand, at least half of them children. However, the project I want to tell through these images starts from much further away: the search for a condition of necessity for intervention in sub-Saharan Africa. Through the study of a vast territory, we gradually descended in scale, identifying Somalia as the most affected and at-risk country in the coming years due to political-socio-environmental
crises. From here to the identification of the Hiraan district and the most troubled city. But how to intervene?
The project, with a broader scope than the individual architectural intervention, aims to provide a tool for the development of future projects elsewhere. Once actions and reproducible strategies have been identified, the key aspect in the architectural conception of the project comes into play: specificity. The deepest challenge was to develop a project capable of fitting into a context of self-construction, with poor and locally available materials, shaping itself as a visible architectural object, a reference and at the same time deeply connected to its landscape.
The outcome is the result of a strong process of dismantling hypotheses, both typological and technological, deeply linked to each other. The project sought, as specifically and precisely as possible, to respond to all the needs and reflections matured during the drafting period, in order to refine itself and be minutely tailored to its condition of necessity.
The ambition is to present a solution to the problem appropriate to the requests not only of the theme but of a broader panorama bordering on the singular architecture of the emergency sector, to embrace general themes of the discipline to which, now more than ever, one should cling with all one’s strength. Reference is made to themes such as minimal land consumption, respect for what already exists where the intervention will take place, careful choice of materials and technology to fit into a common and shared architectural panorama, the search for a balance between the environmental and economic sustainability of the project, along with all the facets that these themes bring.
The project, in an attempt to respond as much as possible to the gradually identified needs, is seized as an opportunity to manifest the potential of an architecture attentive to thorny issues that, at first glance, seem to deny the identity of the artifact but, at a deeper level of analysis, enhance its peculiarities and singular characteristics.
RESIEDENCE with Federica Zanchi, Isotta Zarpellon, Pietro Vivarelli; New IED students residence, Milan, Italy, 2019 (unbuilt); supervision by Arch. Marcello Corti
The name RESIEDENCE is a play on words: it is based on “residence” and IED, the European Institute of Design, which has a branch nearby and has expressed interest in acquiring the area from the public administration. This is one of the academic projects to which I am most attached. It was a real challenge, both technically and in terms of budget control. It involves a demolition followed by construction. The volume took shape progressively with the aim of exploiting urban planning constraints on the street, leaving as much permeable surface as possible on the south front, in the inner courtyard. Technologically, it is designed with a CLT (Cross-Laminated Timber) structure and studied with incredible energy efficiency and renewable energy production.It is a residential building intended for students, so it is designed with all the necessary facilities. Here, the project connects to my professional vocation that I would like to turn into research: how to integrate social housing into denser urban clusters, combining disparate functions capable of creating pride in the lived-in space.
Women’s House with Dr. Psych. Lorena Cucit; Women’s House, Baghere, Senegal, 2021 (unbuilt)
The place is inexorably linked to its society, customs, and traditions, which characterize and influence it. It’s a continuous exchange: place and architecture determine conditions through which society manifests itself in every part. Together, society and place evolve. Once again, we find ourselves in Sub-Saharan Africa, in Senegal. Gender disparity in the state of Senegal is a significant and globally recognized issue. This makes this place another important condition that necessitates intervention.
The study of the place not only influences architecture but also all the technical solutions adopted to understand the life of the project as a fundamental element of the project itself. Developed in collaboration with the psychologist Lorena Cucit, the project is positioned on the thin line between house and home. “House is made by walls, home is made by people.”
In this sense, the project’s purpose was to understand, within the economic limits set for the realization of the
architectural work, the cost of living for the Women’s House in the near future. The typological and technological investigation led us to a mix of solutions adopted with the aim of containing costs and construction time as much as possible. Formally, the adopted solution echoes forms and spaces related to the territory and is easily interpretable in terms of on-site self-construction.
The response to the needs of the place is intertwined with the needs of field operators and society. The adaptable nature to future transformations has, in this sense, been a guiding principle that influenced the entire process of drafting hypotheses before reaching the solution presented in the international competition.
Thank you, goodbye