Opening Inquires

Laney Talaski: Why did you choose to focus on open spaces? We live in an age where technology constantly brings us indoors. So, why focus on open spaces when it is significantly harder to find people that truly appreciate the space outside?

Annalisa Metta: This is very important for my life because I have been trained as an architect. I was used to just designing buildings in a very, very traditional way—to make buildings, going from the overall design to the details and so forth. Then, when I ended my training, and I started as a professional, I discovered the world of landscape architecture. Actually, I discovered it during my final degree project. I was completely fascinated by open space design for a very precise reason: for the condition of not being able to control the final output of my work. It always happens, even if you just design an object, for sure. When you are in the open air, when your roof is the sky, when you have the wind all around, and you have the living plants, animals, and other things, you are always in a sort of conversation. So, your design, your proposal, is just a piece of something that is on a shared table and that is worked on by other authors or designers. This is a bit uncanny, but, at the same time, according to me, it is very exciting. You never know how it will go, how it will end, and it is something that could be used for, say, landscape architecture. So this idea of openness, this idea of uncertainty, this idea of ‘looseness’—to use the words of Alison and Peter Smithson—are the most important reasons that brought me to shift from architecture as building design to architecture as open space design.

Ashley Aurand: As students, one of the first steps we take when we start designing a site is to explore how our building or structures can interact with green space. Do you feel it is more important for our structure to be designed around the existing green space, or should we design a structure and design the green space around the structure?

Annalisa: It is a very good question, but I am afraid that I can’t give you a right answer because, for sure, it depends on many conditions. It is very hard for me to fit design as a receipt or as a rule. I always think that design arises or comes from the site, and so sometimes you are guided from what is already there, and you start from the green spaces that are around for example. Otherwise, you can even find yourself in a sort of tabula-rasa-condition because some sites of our contemporary landscape are in these conditions for many, many reasons. And so, in those conditions, you are asked to start with a new story, and so, for example, you can start with a new structure and making the green spaces around follows. So, I think that what is very fascinating in design is that we do not have a certain roadmap, and yet every time, we have good accordance with what is there. You can use the same idea or process, as I would, either with success or without success, in accordance with a specific mission.