Matías Gatti Montevideo, Uruguay Oficina Matías Gatti
Matías Gatti is a Uruguayan architect, urban planner and former assistant professor. He is currently based in São Paulo, Brazil, from where he runs Oficina Matías Gatti a practice that works across the different scales of design, dealing with the political and social implications of the built environment of the contemporary city. Oficina Matías Gatti projects and initiatives have been recognized in several competitions in Europe, Asia and the Americas. Worth mentioning a 4th place in the international competition Skycity, held in China, an honorable mention in the Japanese competition Wikitopia with his project Make The Streets Green Again! and being finalist in the Beam Camp Project Competition
2016 with the project Parlapark. In the urban field, he recently won a 2nd place prize in the international ideas competition for the post pandemic city, organized by the CAF and Fundación Avina. With notions on human rights, food sovereignty and sustainable development, in 2019 he founded Softurb, an initiative of urban actions awarded at the Beyond Bauhaus Competition, held in Berlin and finalist in the uruguayan phase of the EWC 2021. Seeking to be a mediator between communities, local governments, corporations and the environment. As a Assitant professor he has co-organized architecture workshops both in Brazil and Uruguay, and he is currently an ambassador at Architecture in Development.
Amado Franco Rabito Asunción, Paraguay. Oficina Matías Gatti collaborator
Amado Franco Rabito, is an paraguayan architect based in Asunción, formed by the Facultad de Arquitectura, Diseño y Arte, of the National University of Asunción. Amado is currently working as an Independent Architect in Asunción, and is also an associate of the urban actions - initiative “SoftUrb”, which has been awarded with several international awards and recognitions. Amado has been part of the design and architecture studio “Meraki” as an associate for 5 years, and was also part or reknown paraguayan and brazilian architecture studios such as BAUEN and “Equipo de Arquitectura”, including a collaboration with Paulo Mendes da Rocha’s architecture studio in São Paulo.
His international experience includes an exchange semester at “Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo” of Sao Paulo University, and a participation in an architecture workshop at the Architecture Institute of Venice, in Italy. Several projects in which he has participated as co-author had been part of the official paraguayan selections, and semifinals at International Bienales such as the “XI Bienal Iberoamericana of Architecture and Urbanism, and the “2018 Bienal Panamericana de Arquitectura de Quito”. Also the project “Intervenciones en la Chacarita”, project in which he participated as co-author, has been awarded with the COAM prize, of “Works outside Madrid”.
Selected works
As a big ‘‘tin can telephone’’ system, Parlapark is a project / installation about human communication, in the era of the social media, we want to vindicate the value of oral conversation, and also to learn about sound physics. Parlapark takes place in an inspiring and motivating scenario, we seek not only to share the colective construction of the devices, but each one of them to share a secret, to
tell a tale, to whisper, to talk, to find out about each other only using their voices and ears. The project consist of 4 wood cones connected to each other by a tight string system, creating an analog network. Each one of this 4 devices are set in differents camp’s scenarios: deep in the forest, at the shore lake, above in the trees and dug on the ground.
Parlapark!
Finalist Beam Camp Project Competition Strafford, NH, USA. Author: Matías Gatti 2016
Skyfarm is an answer to provide healthy organic food inside a vertical city in mainland China, and also by being a sustainable and useful infrastructure that will also be a public space. It will use the latest technology on urban farming solutions, it will be a sustainable vertical hydroponic farming facility, not only economically and ecologically but also socially. We want to create
a new kind of indoor public space, a topographic landscape, that seeks to achieve a sense of belonging on its users and that is able to build a local identity for the community. Skyfarm will also be an education facility that will show up the production process, to transfer the knowledge in order to raise awareness and replicate in other interior building spaces.
SkyFarm
4th place Skycity International Competition Changhsha, China. Authors: Matías Gatti, Jeff Chicarelli 2018
Playponics is a awareness rising hydroponic installation for public space, created during the Creative Food Cycles Workshop. It investigated how design, based on creativity, circularity and new technologies, can help to boost participatory food production in the urban environment in a pro-active and productive way, and through diverse scales. Participants designed creative cultivation system
projects and tested them developing innovative urban food production prototypes. The workshop programme was structured to give theoretical and practical classes in a complementary way. The participants coming from different backgrounds, learned about Circular Design and Participatory Processes, Open Farming and Biophotovoltaic Systems, Resilient Foodsheds, etc.
Playponics
Built prototype IAAC / Creative Food Cycles Workshop Barcelona. Authors: Matías Gatti, Fabiana Cerutti Rossetti, Giulia Bertoldo, Demi Pradolin, Emily Whyman. 2019
Use in case of... People! is an urban device to temporarily transform the streets into a safe public space, with social distancing and designed for people. A system designed to complement other tactical urban planning proposals such as parklets, urban gardens, etc. The system is made up of two urban devices: Roll-up Park and Roll-up Banner. The first is an urban facility, which will occupy the usual
space of a parklet, to support audiovisual and / or recreational activities plus a bicycle station; the second is a device for signaling and temporary street closure. The system works together, Roll-up banner closes the street at each end to vehicular traffic, and informs the event that will take place in the block, by doing this, the other device unrolls and prepares for the scheduled activity.
Use in case of... People! Finalist Ideatón - Volver a la Calle - BID Latin America. Author: Matías Gatti 2020
The Urban Resilience Public Spaces (ERES) are site-specific urban interventions, within the framework of local experiences of participatory governance and in response to the health and social crisis caused by the covid-19 pandemic. It proposes not a radical transformation of the city but to act as a mediator between the inhabitants and the environment. It is a pilot experience of qualifying
sections of secondary streets in vulnerable areas of the city. Transforming them into public spaces of coexistence that might function as an extension of homes.
Espacios de Resiliencia Urbana 2nd. Place Ideas competition for post-covid cities Caf - Fundación Avina. Author: Matías Gatti 2021
Formas de luz was a workshop organized in collaboration with the first year course of architecture and urbanism schools of the UFRGS (Porto Alegre, Brazil) and the UDELAR (Montevideo, Uruguay). During it, students were as-
ked to explore and investigate about design processes, manipulating light and shadows, through shapes, textures and materials, using various parametric design and digital fabrication tools.
Formas de luz Workshop Porto Alegre, RS - Brazil UFRGS / FADU UDELAR 2015
The need to offer shady spaces has been exploited in such a way as to create real places designed by the shadow itself. In a city where the meeting places are the fields and squares, shadow is the only thing is missing to allow people to stop. In fact, the shadow itself defines a perimeter that can be configured as a market or as a simple meeting place. The conceived structure, thanks to its flexibility allows to respond to the
need to create shade during the different hours of the day. In fact, it can rotate during the different hours of the day, following the movement of the sun and thus allowing it to be used more. This displacement also allows the structure to be used in different ways: when it is in vertical position it creates a facing that can be very useful especially during the winter while when it is lowered the net can accommodate people who can lie just above the water water.
The Shadow of Venice
Venice workshop of Architecture (WaVE 2015) Venice, Italy Author: Amado Franco Rabito 2015
Intention note & project image
No man, go on During the first months of the covid-19 pandemic, in which many of the cities underwent a mandatory lockdown, the presence of wild animals in anthropized spaces was widely documented, foxes where seen wandered in London streets, wild pumas seeking for food in Santiago de Chile, or deer reclaiming urban spaces even in metro stations in Nara, Japan. Wild animals that in other circumstances have stayed away from cities and human activity, but that, taking advantage of the cessation of activities and the empty streets, were able to return, at least for a short time, to the places that were once their natural habitat. This situation illustrates two facts, first: the intrinsic resilience of the fauna that inhabits in and around cities, and their ability to survive and adapt to the human environment, and second: the fragility of our systems, both biological, social and economic. Nature goes on and on, even without human presence, even with all the alterations and damages that human activity has inflicted on pre-existing ecosystems. Life continued and for a brief time it was possible to observe the impermanence of our systems and even of human existence, and how it might be quickly replaced by other species if someday we simply disappeared off the face of the earth. This trauma that humanity has undergone, and that still does, might serve to rethink our role, as a species that coexists and depends on other non-human species and systems, it should serve to accept our interdependence within a complex and dynamic system, that it’s everything but static and permanent. And finally, it might be a final wake up call to imagine other ways of
living, of coexisting with all species, in more resilient, inclusive and sustainable cities. This installation is an invitation to look beyond our own anthropocenic experience.
Installation:
The silhouette of a fox and its shadow, projected on the wall, becomes one single structure, a black wooden sheet piece lying on the patio floor. The projected shadow, disproportionately large and deformed, establishes a dialogue between an apparently helpless animal, which perhaps came down to the city in search of food, and the resilient force of nature, almost as a big invisible creature that its waiting the right moment to make its way into a city emptied of humans, and reclaimed it. The installation will be made from black matte melamine plywood sheets, cut in cnc router, and joined by metal joints, and steel angles and reinforcements.
@oficinamatiasgatti Sao Paulo, Brazil. 12. 2021 +5511997651175 +59891320651 arq.matiasgatti@gmail.com