Justin Allen
Katherine Armstrong
Craig Bast
Jarret Cromling
Samantha Peterman
Reynaldo A. Matinez
Morgan Russell
Stephen Tepper
Made by students enrolled in the “Video, Media, and Architecture” class taught by professor Marco Brizzi at Kent State University in Florence in Fall 2022.
(Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia) in Venice where they graduated together with full marks and honors. After gaining some experience, in 2003, they set up Bricolo Falsarella associati based in their studio house on the Morainic hills of Garda Lake (Province of Verona). Their works have received important awards in Italy and Europe. In 2015, they won the Architettiverona Prize for the restoration of Villa Saccomani in Sommacampagna, a prize they won again in 2021 with the Brolo della Cantina Gorgo in Custoza. The latter project was included in the exhibition “Nuove Cantine Italiane. Territori e Architetture” produced by Casabella, for which they also curated the installation at Palazzo Balladoro on the occasion of Vinitaly 2022. In the field of museography they have curated several installations at the Museo di Castelvecchio in Verona, where they finally restored the East Wing, working in the spaces left unfinished by Carlo Scarpa(1906-1978). Their works have been published in important magazines such as Casabella and Abitare. With reference to their intensely contextual and humanized architecture, they have been invited to hold conferences in Italy and abroad. Filippo Bricolo has a PhD in architectural composition with mention of publication from the IUAV in Venice and has been continuously teaching for several years. He currently teaches at the Mantua campus of the Politecnico di Milano with Brazilian architect Marcio Kogan, with whom he has a long-standing collaboration.
Jarrett Cromling: What do you design for? Is it an expression or extension of yourself? Or does your design process change based on the given project? For example, the project at the West Wing at Castelvecchio. It’s apparent that the design was used to promote the history of the site. How does this change project to project?
Filippo Bricolo: It’s a big question. Yeah, not so easy. I think that in our work as architects and your experiences throughout your life and then try to work on yourself as an architect; very hard. I think to be ourselves is the best gift that any of us can give to the world. This is research that you have to do all your life. When you have a specific work, a specific place, or a specific question, I think that you have to critically interpret the question that your clients give to you. In the case of the West Wing at Castelvecchio, the question is not only given by the director of the museum but also by the history. For example, what happened with this element that is the big mosaic that we find on the ground? And so you have to start to analyze everything. In that case, you have to know it was a very strange story about what happened. At the beginning of the 20th century, they decided to change the position of the door for traffic questions. They removed the door and every element and changed the position. For almost 20 years, the door was in another place. Finally, they decided to move the door again. But they decided not to put it in the original position, but on a little square that is near the museum. What happened is that they decided to place the door where there was a Roman villa, and they decided not to excavate it. Some years after they finally decided to excavate, they found a big mosaic, and the director of the museum asked me, okay, what can we do
with this piece of history? So we decided to put it inside the museum, near the place where the mosaic was found, and put it in a position where the tourists can see the mosaic from the position where it was originally. It’s a strange story about elements moving all around. We have to put this element inside the room. What can we do? You have to know that it’s usual to put the mosaic on the floor because it was originally on the floor, but for me, it was not a good idea because some people would think it was the original position. Therefore, we decided to place it suspended, as it sits now. We had a lot of discussions with the superintendent because
“I think that in our work as architects, it’s very important to go deeper into ourselves. That means that you need to look deeply into yourself and your experiences throughout your life and then try to work on yourself as an architect.”
they told me that it was not correct, but we could do it. For our critical interpretation, it was very important to make this new exposition. We decided to make a model, one-to-one, of this big element, put it inside the room, and then we asked the superintendent to make the decision, and they approved. Finally, we were able to make this installation. This was our critical interpretation. For me it is crucial, when working with history, to have different layers, from where you have to decide what to do and where to start. It’s not so easy. It’s very difficult. It’s our job.
Reynaldo Martinez: For example, Pompeii is still “intact”, and you can walk in and see almost everything. Being in its original context. And you’re working with just a fragment. With the goal of making an exposition. So it’s more critical not to be like, oh, it exists here, but it’s more of a piece of art, and away from its original fuction. I find your solution to the West Wing very intriguing.
Filippo: Yes. It’s not so easy to work on it. Another problem was that part of the museum was done by a very important architect, Carlo Scarpa. He never finished this part of the museum because his idea was to make the entrance of the museum from that little square. The door that you can see in the picture is the original door of Carlo Scarpa. They had a lot of problems with fire codes which did not allow him to make this room; so this place wasn’t finished. It was a very big problem to work in the place of a very important architect and try to insert new elements. Different layers of history, modern and past. It was a very interesting moment for me.
Marco: You all should visit that museum; you will understand why Carlo Scarpa himself was able to put each work of art in an unconventional and specific position in order to make it possible for visitors to establish a special relationship with it. What Flippo did was a very similar approach that gives the piece a new, unconventional point of view.
Flippo: Every time Scarpa has to make an exposition of fragments of a statue or an art piece, he starts a discussion with this work of art and tries to understand it. Then he presents these works of art like a question to the visitor. When you arrive at this piece of art, it asks you something. You have to try to understand there is a little bit of a crisis in the design presentation; things aren’t very clear. Every one of us has to start to think about what this art piece is saying, what the architect is saying to us. The best thing for us to do as users and architects is to try to understand something.
Filippo Bricolo.
Portrait of Filippo as he discusses his separation of work and life, his home studio, and routine.
Justin Allen: What was it like first starting your personal studio, did it change your family life at home being run out of your home, what were some struggles you faced and how did you overcome them?
Filippo: I am a person who works very hard. I wake up early in the morning, around four or five, and begin to work. For me, it’s important to have a house that is also the studio because I can wake up early, go downstairs to the studio, and for three hours, I work on the architectural drawings. Then at nine in the morning, I become a problem solver until about eight in the evening. Also, having a house that is a studio allows my son and daughter to cross the street and come in to say hello and eat something together. So it is like a little community, and yet we can still work in the studio. There are about five to six of us, with my wife, Falsarella. The studio name is Bricolo Falsarella because my name is Bricolo, and my wife Falsarella. Then we have four or five architects working with our dog and us. Our dog is Utzon—named after the famous architect. We work together, and we are like a big family. This is important for me that we do not fight inside the studio; what is important is to be passionate, honest, and at times quiet. We live in a little village that is
not far from town but twenty minutes by car. I grew up in this little village that is also near my mother’s house. In the beginning, we have a lot of meeting sites that are twelve minutes to walk to. Today we have to travel to a place that is twenty minutes by car, all surrounded by hills. It can be hard because the client can have a lot of things to say, but there is only so much you can do within that time, making it very complex. On our website or social media, you can see the best parts of architecture with the images but not the complex side, like talking to a client and managing different things. But, we try to manage a place of peace and to give time to think and go deeper into the work to get a solution. This is our mission and what we are trying to do
Reynaldo Martinez: In your home studio description, you mention the name of your dog, Utzon. Is this reference to the famous architect Jorn Utzon? If so, how influential is his work on your present practice?
Filippo: What I like is not an architect but a work. I am not fully fascinated by all the works of an architect, but individual works that are very important to me. One of these is Can Lis, a house built for himself and his wife in Majorca, Spain. They had a lot of problems in the construction of the opera house in Sydney, and they decided to build this beautiful house on the cliff of an island in Spain. It is a house built in stone, very simple everything is natural with old technology. There is a room that I love very much. You enter this room and have four or five windows, like eyes from where you can see the sea. The glass is placed outside the stone so you can perceive the sea without seeing the frame. So you are in this other place, but you are outside; this is critical to his attention to detail. Then you have a little cut in the stone and this cut—I love it. It allows the sun to enter only for 15 minutes a day. And when they asked Jorn Utzon why. He responded with, “happiness is short,” so you have to understand this. To be present in a specific moment. This is why I love Jorn Utzon. Last year I went
to visit some houses he did. To finish a book I never published, titled “catasto sentimentale,” sentimental record of buildings and is like a nobel being in Can Lis work on the cliff, and then you arrive in the work of Carlo Scarpa. Like being in the place of all the works I love. This is why we gave the name Jorn Utzon to the dog. You need to know one thing; my dog loves the sun, I also need to show you this. It’s an album titled Utzon and the sun. [Laughs]
And it’s incredible that Utzon is searching the happiness. I love these pictures.
Katherine Armstrong: How do you balance your practice as an architect and teaching, do you find that your work as an architect influences your teaching or vice versa?
Filippo: A lot of architects that I love are teachers and architects, for me, it is important to be like Sverre Fehn, an architect I love, was a professor. Here in Italy, it is not possible to do it; it is difficult because our laws do not permit us to be full-time professors and architects. So it sometimes happens that inside a university, only
“For me, there is no distinction between doing this. Every day I write, I draw, I think. So what I am trying to teach to my students is that you have to be an architect, to build, but to never stop studying,”
a few professors are also professional architects. But for me, it is incredibly important to build and think, and think and build; for me, there is no distinction between doing this. Every day I write, I draw, I think. So what I am trying to teach to my students is that you have to be an architect, to build, but to never stop studying, to research, to go deeper into your faults in your research. For me it is not possible to divide. If you look at the work of many architects like Louis Kahn, for example, he was an architect who built a lot but also thought a lot, and sometimes it happens that architects don’t want to write because it’s not so easy to write. To write in architecture is sometimes a bit dangerous, so a lot of architects think but don’t use it to write. You know architecture is beautiful because it’s a nonverbal language, and you don’t need a concept. You work with stones, not with words, so an architect can be powerful as an intellectual without writing a line. So it is not a problem to not write.
Katherine Armstrong: Do you believe that your tutelage under Carlo Scarpa influenced your design process? If so, what aspects of your design are derived from it? How about current design inspirations, how do you frame yourself within the contemporary architectural world?
Filippo: I grew up in a very strange moment in architecture when I was similar to your age. Here in Europe, there wasn’t a movement in architecture called Postmodernism, and it was a reaction to international style, so we grew up in this strange moment with architects trying to make arches and columns. And I don’t know why but I don’t love the International Style, like the first of Le Corbusier, so I started researching strange architects. Strange architects that in the strongest moments in the Modern Movement started to make different research, like Sigurd Lewerentz in Sweden, Dom Hans van der Laan (he was a monk), and Jože Plečnik in Slovenia, and I try to collect these strange figures. Also, today I don’t refer to a modernist reference; I don’t have an architect that I love so much, rather I love the moment of a crisis and these architects that were in a crisis like Sverre Fehn. This year I visited some of his works, and I love this kind of architecture that is not so clear, that is a little bit suspended. An architecture that asks you something that you don’t understand; an architecture that can be poetry. So I’m moving along these, not architects, but works that I love, and what I’m trying to do is study what I love a lot and then forget everything. If you try to repeat something, then it is not possible. Every question and every location is different,
Morgan Russell. A captivating moment of a student asking a question regarding creative processes.
so if you try to copy an element and put it in another work, it is not possible. So I try to forget everything and try to go deeper into this strange and not clear idea that I have. Getting older, I started to not need something that was clear; it was not important to me to have a solution. I prefer an open work, a work that is a question, not a solution.
Morgan Russell: Within your creative process, do the ideas come first, or, as you draw, do they come in through that medium? In other words, do you draw with intention or does the intention come through as you draw?
Filippo: My way of drawing is changing–it’s changing a lot. Ten years ago, I only drew sections and details. Why? Because I was good at drawing, and here in Italy, we have a lot of architects that were very good artists but not good architects. I started to say, “Don’t draw, build.” So, my notebook in this period was full of details and sections. For sixteen years, we worked only on restorations, so every time we had a wall– an element, it was not a problem of space— because the spaces were abandoned in the house we were restoring. But then, after sixteen years, the clients started to ask us to make a new building, and we understood that we were not able to make forms–we were not used to making forms. We were a
little bit frightened. It was very strange for us to make a shape– a form, so we started to make a relationship between space and structure. The shape of the building is not done by something that starts from a photo, but for the process of construction. We started to work on it. But at the moment it was very important to control the proportion. I started to make a perspective in scale. For seven years, I drew only in perspective and scale to be able to control the dimensions and the thickness of every element. It’s drawing to control. Two years ago, I changed my way of drawing. I started to draw something more poetic– like the drawings of a child. We have not controlled proportion– a wall became a river and the mountains. This way of drawing allowed me to be more poetic. I’m trying to do that in the work we have been doing these past years. It is something that is changing, every morning, I draw for five hours. No computer, no nothing– no phone, just me and a piece of paper. And if my mind says, “Ok, go on the computer and see that reference,” the other part of my mind says, “No. Stay on the table and try to work off of your memory.” This is a little bit suffering, but it is very interesting for me to do these projects. Then I give all of the drawings to my collaborators, and they start to confer with me, and it’s like a dance. What we are doing in this period
is making a lot of renders –not models, renders to be sure that the client understands what we want to do–because if I make a drawing of a brick wall that allows it to move in the light, I can make drawings of the brick moving, but the client won’t understand. So, we try to make beautiful representations of the project, about the materials, the light, the atmosphere –because we are trying to design the atmosphere. Here in Italy, if you say that, they’ll call you crazy, “You’re not an architect; that is not related to architecture,” but it is esssantial for us.
I started to draw something more poetic–like the drawings of a child. A wall becomes a river and the mountains, and this way of drawing allowed me to be more poetic.
Justin Allen: Many of the drawings I’ve seen look very finalized and well finished when it comes to the presented idea. What is your process for getting to these finalized ideas and what happens to the other ideas that didn’t make it?
Filippo: Yes, drawing expressly in the idea of the perspective was a way to live inside the architecture before the architecture was built; to live in the space. This is very important to take time and to be in this room. This is why sometimes the drawings are so precise in the shadows or light. When you are in a place,
try to imagine, and you look at that wall, and you take time, you can start to see the shadows from the trees and light on the wall. If you take one second, you can begin to see something; you look for longer, one minute, two minutes, or ten minutes, and everything changes. So this kind of drawing is to lose time, go slow, and to go deeper because every day at this moment goes by very fast with the news and teachers, so what you have to do is go down, you have to lose time. So this is my way of drawing as a way to stay inside the space that we are designing, and then we can make a new drawing and another, and with every work, I have done this. We can come back and see the evolution of the idea, and sometimes you say, “for a moment, the project is like a beautiful promise, but then the next day, you say it’s very bad.” So you come back to the notebook and go back to the point where the project was good; then you can make it more like this.
Bricolo+Falsarella, East
Detail discussed later in the lecture-- an example of balance between intervention of space and mindfulness of historical preservation.
Reynaldo Martinez: How much does the original function of an existing structure influence your contemporary design narrative?
Filippo: Every project is different, and every time period is different. We always try to go back in history. For example, when we started working on the museum of Castelvecchio, our task was only to design one room for one fragment. Then we go to the other room, and we start to demolish one part, and we go deeper and studying the history. We discover a bomb arrived there and demolished part of it which is not visible. Never stop working on what you can’t see, and never stop working on what is behind what you can see. So, we start to investigate the ground and history. Our job is to dig down. What is the right question? For example, we are doing a kitchen for a house with a 7-meter tall ceiling like a basilica. But why? Well, our client has 7 sons. So we start working with the idea of “What is a kitchen?” It’s like a place with a big table where you can cook; you can talk and play cards. We start with this big idea that is not related to the function, but is probably totally related to the function. What is the function?
Katherine Armstrong: Do you see your work as being in a constant and evolving conversation with history or as a series of interventions that coincide with various points of history? That is to say, do you feel like the historic precedent, that is seen in your works like the Museum of Castelvecchio or Villa Saccomani, is vital to your architectural approach or a result of your education and location?
Filippo: Every time is different; for example Villa Saccomani, we decided to transform a garage independent of an ancient villa, and the rules of the municipality asked us to demolish everything. But we started to research, and finally, we found that there was an ancient part of the building. So we decide to demolish everything but this fragment, and we start to move along with this fragment and what this fragment says to us and what we can do with it. It was a
new moment in our work, so we decided to make a graft. But what we don’t like in the architecture that we can see on the web is the idea that the graft has to say, “I’m new; I’m the graft.” So you have the beautiful stone building and then some black box inside; it is very strange. It is like you have a new thing on your face and say it is new. So we decided to make a graft but to hide it, so we decided to put a new brick wall on the stone wall, and then we painted every face with an old type of painting called scialbatura, so when you’re there, you cannot see the graft, but if you spend the time you can start to see there is something new. In that movement, we decided on a new approach to the graft: how we can make the graft and hide the graft and allow people to discover it only if they want to give time to it. When you live in a city like Verona of layers you have a building with another building, but it is not so clear to perceive the different layers of history. If you start to think and see slowly, you start to see this process; we decided this thing, but with another project, we can make another solution, another building. We decided to make an opposite building, every time is different, a different movement, different space. What is important is to have this critical interpretation every time; start to think.
Katherine: Yes, because I know in preservation, there is a lot of debate on how you should interfere with architecture, whether you should leave it alone entirely or completely transform it, and also whether its the duty of the architect to continue the original vision of the architecture or to enact your own vision so do you think where in that debate do you see yourself fall. in terms of how much an architect should intervene and how tied is the architect to the original vision of the building?
Filippo: Sometimes these buildings are not done by a specific architect; they are traditional buildings done directly by the owner or people. So you are not talking with architects that came before; you are talking about something more complex. Which is the culture, the identity of the place, a sense of belonging of materials, atmosphere so the dialogue is how can you be part of this history; when we decided to build the winery with the stone it is because there are a lot of buildings with the same stone and we decided to be part of this process, and the only experience that we had to work in the work of another architect is with Carlo Scarpa which is not so easy to do. [Laughs]
So, in that case, we work with traditional buildings and historic buildings, and
you have to know it is not common what we’re doing because usually, you cover everything with paint and fake old elements. So, we decided to make this more naked. It is not easy because sometimes you have many problems with the municipality’s rules, which don’t allow you to do this sort of process, but architecture is a battle. [Laughs]
Craig Bast: In our studios this year we have been working on site analysis and our location is the Santa Rosa Tower park which is located on the Arno River. So, how do you begin to analyze some of the constraints you may have when working on your site?
Filippo: It is difficult to say something without seeing the wall, but with our studio, we work on the river of Verona, the Adige River, and you know that it’s a similar story to Florence. In 1882 there was a big flood in Verona, and the city in ancient times was always on the river, and the river was the mother of the city. Then, the river became the enemy, and they decided to turn the cities “back” to the river like in Florence. So, we make a lot of interventions to try and change this. Similar to what you probably have to do, it’s incredible that this city of water, with a beautiful river, has a big wall. Then we try to bring life back to the level of the
water, which is not so easy because the city has been changing and no one is on the river. But Goodluck.
[Laughs]
Stephen Tepper: “The studio recovers materials from the region and tradition and reinterprets them in new enveloping spaces bathed in natural light.” This is a quote taken directly from your website about your home studio. So my question is, how important is natural light to your work and thought process?
Filippo: You have to know that in the 20th century everything changed, from the material, 300 to 400 years ago they used stone, now they use stucco. Then, they stop with history and start a new building. This is a moment where poor people start having good things, having a house and bathroom, a more hygienic house, but we lose some of our identity. So, we work along with the ancient people who know how to use the material like stone. In Verona, there are a lot of stones, different stones, and beautiful stones. So we start again, and we go to these guys, and they tell us we can use the stone in this way, and starting to work with something that is part of the identity of these places. There is no reason in 2022 to not use things like this. So, what is important for me is not to
restore history but to be modern; you can be modern by using these kinds of things. You have to actualize, for example, in my village, every wall was painted with the same stucco, it’s like sand. Today you can see a yellow house and a white house; it’s like a virus in the landscape. Now we try to make a concrete wall with the same sand found on the ground. So our building is modern because we use concrete, but it appears in the landscape better than yellow and white. Another thing that is to us is places in these old houses that are not full of light, so you have places of calm, that is a little dark, and you have the sun come inside, that is our tradition, our culture. In our identity and our culture we have a different relationship with the landscape. It is not so easy, and we will try and work on it.
Jarrett Cromling: As students, what do you think we should be learning from your work? Or is that something we should decide as individuals? Is there anything that you wish you knew when you were a student?
Filippo: I think that you don’t have to learn anything from work.
I think that everyone has to go deeper into their identity. So if you like something in our work or enjoy what we are doing, it’s good. If you don’t like it,
Bricolo+Falsarella, The Brolo at Cantina Gorgo (Photo by Atelier XYZ).
The pavilion.
Villa Saccomani. (Bricolo+Falsarella). Sketch.
Bricolo+Falsarella, Villa Saccomani Photo by Atelier XYZ).
From sketched representation to finalized project-- showing how the light molds the form.
you just have to find another thing. [Laughs]
This is only our way of doing things. It’s not your; it doesn’t need to be your way. We only do this because this is what we like. We do this because it’s us. You have to do what you want to do; it’s your experience. My suggestion is to take a look, for example, at a website like Arch Daily. When you see a work that attracts you, that means you see yourself in that work, so you have to understand why you like this. You have to stop. You have to stop to analyze it and try to understand why you are attracted to this work. Doing this, you get to dive deeper into your personality. That is what we need in this world, not a copy but individuals.
The interview with Filippo Bricolo was a thoughtful conversation that provided insight into his humanistic approach to architecture. He offered an intimate view of his life as an architect and his unique drawing approach, highlighting his work’s authentic dialogue with Italian history and its context. By devising and asking questions, students were given the opportunity to explore their own architectural inquiries through the viewpoint of the interviewed architect, opening new avenues of thought and perspectives. Through the interview’s self-directed and spontaneous nature, students could begin to find their own voice within the architectural sphere and learn how to actively engage with others in the dialogue.