NC Portfolio 2021 by niccolocesaris

PORTFOLIO Niccolò Cesaris

improvemi ShapeMi competition, 2021. Winning entry. With Nicolò Foppa Pedretti and Virginia Bergamasco

ShapeMi is a competition promoted by Milan’s Global Shapers Hub in collaboration with the City’s Municipality. The target of the brief was to develop a strategy to promote collaborative projects towards a more sustainable city. My team’s response to this was the design of an App that would play an essential role in rising the citizen’s awareness in terms of air pollution, and also help them to access the government’s funding for interventions that aim at improving the Energy Class of their houses. After an in depth data analysis, it was my job within the team to visualise the outcomes and brainstorming process, as well as translate our ideas graphically. It was the first time for me to design a User Interface, and it has been extremely challenging and fascinating at the same time, and for sure something I am very much looking forward to do more in the future.

Above: two of the summarizing graphs of our data analysis Below: a map that shows the elements we started from, and how our proposal translates these inputs in Environmental, Social and Governance terms.

Visualization of the User Interface

Living Room Cooperative Housing for Young Workers Individual project, 2020-2021.

Living Room is a project for 800 cooperative housing units in Milan. Its premises lay in a careful and critical reading of the development of domestic typologies adopted to house the working class in the city between 1861 and 1914. In particular, the advent of philanthropic housing and the projects of the Società Umanitaria unveil a project of domestication, housewifization and gender segregation, where a subjectivity typical of the middle class is imposed over the working class. As a result, domestic space was severed from any threshold between public and private, in a fashion that continues to be at the core of planning even today. The design project aims at resuming the founding values of the Casa di Ringhiera: conviviality, solidarity and care. Living Room challenges the inherited boundaries by addressing thresholds at three scales, where the kitchen, the gallery and the courtyard become emblematic, namely to read the proposal at the apartment, lodging and urban scale. Living Room acknowledges the popular tradition of the Casa di Ringhiera, and formalises it with a typically Milanese post war, rationalist approach, synthetizing them in a contemporary proposal, that looks at the past in a critical, yet never nostalgic way, in order to shape the future.

Apartments’ Catalogue.

Hints of Inhabitation.

Ground Floor and Typical Plan.

Threshold and Appropriation,

Reclaiming Cœnobism A Cistercian Monastery for the XXI Century Individual project, 2019-2020.

This is a project for a contemporary Cistercian Monastery, through which I expose the controversial history of the Order, which success in the XII and XIII centuries heavily relied upon an economic and territorial system which extended well beyond the walls of the monasteries . This system proved to be very successful, nevertheless it progressively began to corrupt the idea of auarchy upon which the Order had been established, and soon Cistercians played an essential, if not pivotal role in secular economic and political scenarios. The Cistercian Order becomes therefore paradigmatic of a long-date struggle that the Church has not yet been able to solve, which is to find a balance between the aim of a spiritual life - economy of the soul - and the need of sustenance - economy. The project analyses the funding principles of the Cistercians to propose an alternative reading of their logics. The ‘ad quadratum’ precept is crucial when it comes to design, and its alternative reading offers a new way of fomalising the relationship between the different spaces of the project. Furthermore, Reclaiming Cœnobism aims at achieving a total synergy between human intervention and nature. The proposal, in fact, does not appear as an island within the lanscape, but rather blends into the surrounding environment. Among the strenghts of this project there is the ability to speak about extremely contemporary and relevant issues such as intellectual, physical and mental care, in a narrative which context is much wider.

Analogous Map: a representation that summarises the research and design process.

Ad Quadratum design logic. Abstraction and interpretation. Site Plans shown at different scales.

Plan and Section of each of the spaces. The design effort has been centered in having the same envelope, but providing variation in section.

A series of images that portrays the interiors of different spaces.

A series on Isolation and its links to familiarity, communal life, connection and production.

Education City

Individual project, 2016-2017.

The project tackles boththe Urban and Architectural scale in the critical context of Academic Institutions in Athens. At the former, it envisions a strategy to bring the universities back to the center of the city and to use the new figure of the public ground to stitch together neighborhoods with different demographics. At the architectural scale, instead, the form challenges the relation between institutional and public spaces, by blurring their boundaries. In particular, the observation of the very peculiar relation between the balconies and their users in Athens is here translated at a bigger scale, with the proposal offering urban balconies that elevate the public space at different levels. The program is a product-design university, located in the former industrial neighborhood, where the expertise and knowledge of local craftsmen can inform and complement the use of the latest technologies. This contamination is expected to determine a new stage for athenian manufacture. The institution serves as a platform to facilitate connections between students and potential employers.

Politechneio

Greek Parliament Hilton

Trilogy

Conservatory

Archeological Museum

Kapodistrian Campus

Institution Public

Institution

Public

Institution

Public

Institution

Above: Hand crafted site model. Below: Diagram that shows the strategy of the urban terraces, challenging the boundary between public space and institution.

Pictures of the 1:100 hand

d crafted physical model.

Competition, 2019. Team: Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA)

Opera Gent is a competition entry to refurbish Gent’s Opera House. I was part of the team at OMA from the very beginning of the competition, and throughout the project. The proposal was one of refurbishment and addition to a historical building, and the goal of our project was to intensify and diversify the use of the venue, in order to render it more sustainable. This ambition was reflected both at the urban and architectural scales of the intervention. Throughout the process I have been valued and appreciated for my work, and an increasing number of responsibilities was delegated to me. Not only was I in charge of strategizing and crafting the physiscal model, but also the reference figure when it came to 3D modelling. Moreover, I directly managed the correspondance with the Structural Engigneer. During the final weeks of production, I also helped out to craft diagrams and images that well represented the atmosphere and mood of the proposal.

Perspective sections showing different stage configurations.

Use of the foyer, mood board and final image. The foyer is seen as a stage where the spectators become the actors, and put themselvs on display.

Diagrams and images of different scenarios within the ‘Black Box’.

XXL VOORSTELLING

Diagrams and image showing the different, possible configurations of the stage.

GENESIS SCHEMATIC DESIGN REPORT TEAM: OFFICE FOR METROPOLITAN ARCHITEC TURE (OMA)

EMPLOYEE PARKING SERVICE RECEPTION AND DELIVERY

TEST DRIVE

SALES OFFICES

TOILETS/ PANTRY

STAFF ENTRANCE

EMPLOYEE ZONE

MULTI ROOM

QUICK SERVICE

CUSTOMER PARKING

CUSTOMER DRIVE-THROUGH ENTRANCE VALET BOOTH

PARTS WORKSHOP ZONE

SERVICE AWAITING PARKING

The Facade and DIagramatic Plan express the spatial and aesthetic approach to the project.

Interior views of the drive in (above) and workshop zone (below).

0.2m

3.6m

2.40 - 2.80m

2.60 - 3.00m

2.7m

0.2m

0.5m

0.2m

2.40 - 2.80m

2.60 - 3.00m 0.2m

3.6m

SECTION A

3.6m

0.2m

SECTION B

Consultation area. 2.7m 0.5m 0.2m

Black Powdercoated Stall, RAL 9005 4000mm

Aluminum Signage

2500mm

6500mm

5000mm

Black Powdercoated Cabinet, RAL 9005

Black Signage, RAL 9005 Black Signage, RAL 9005

4000mm 1000mm 1000mm 1000mm 1000mm 500mm 1000mm

Black Powdercoated Stall, RAL 9005 Aluminum Signage

Black Powdercoated Cabinet, RAL 9005

Black Signage, RAL 9005 Black Signage, RAL 9005

Service Stations.

5000mm

6500mm

8000mm

2500mm

NEIHEISER ARGYROS Summer Internship, 2017.

Verdun Road, residential. Perspective section.

Verdun Road client’s presentation model.

Above Below, competition. Commercial + Residential.

THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS La Biennale di Venezia, exhibition, 2018. Collaboration with NEIHEISER ARGYROS.

“The School of Athens exhibition at the Greek Pavilion considers academic common spaces as architectural specimens; objectively identified, classified, and made legible for analysis, comparison, and debate. Specifically, the exhibition showcases physical models of fifty-six different academic common spaces from across history and around the world, both realized and unrealized. By no means canonical, complete, or definitive, this selection is simply meant to provide a diverse and representative sample of compelling projects. The fifty-six models on display are mounted on the end of vertical steel bars, elevated to waist height for easy viewing from all angles, and organized in a grid that fills the pavilion equally in all directions. The pavilion is its own kind of learning “freespace.” By self-consciously adopting the architectural trope (or architectural cliché?) of the amphitheater, the space is constructed as a stepped landscape that enables individual study, small group informal conversation, and large group lectures and debates. The field of 3d printed models is displayed across this landscape, inviting visitors to move throughout the pavilion, and animate the models – almost as additional participants – during large lectures or events” (NEIHESER ARGYROS) In this project I had the chance to study, abstract and 3D model the architectural common of Cooper Union, in New York. The exhibition has been displayed a second time, in 2020, at the Benaki Museum of Athens.

Picture of the 3D printed model of Cooper Union’s common, and pictures of the Greek Pavilion.

Vertical Campus

A New Stage of (Re)Production Individual Project, 2017-2018. The research for this project focused on contemporary inhabitation. The intellectual framework starts with the identification ofthe ideas of heimlich and heimat, in order to better understand the easing factors of adaptation, in a historical moment that asks people to be as dynamic and loose as possible. The paradigm for this constant call for adaptation is today represented by companies like the Tech Giants, which though tend to build campuses that operate as centers of accumulation for the production of knowledge. Architecturally, this project investigates the possibility of building an urban campus for a tech giant; an extreme building that combines working facilities as well as education and residential program. The relationship that is thus established between employer and employee is one that exceeds the usual professional boundaries, and evidently taps into the reproductive sphere. This project really uses design as an empowering element; the timber core becomes the predominant and characteristic design feature of the building, providing it with a strong, definite identity. The core becomes therefore a totem, and establishes the mythology of the project.

Left: Physical model showcasing the predominant design feature, the core. Right above: Rendered drawing of a residential typical floorplate. Right below: Residential typical floorplan.

Interior view of a

a residential floor.

Nomadic Glacier Group Project, 2016. (With Ran Ben Chaya and Napat Chayochaichana)

This is a three weeks project where the power and relevance of representation are stressed and used to formulate a criticism. The drawing depicts a city and its people that try to overcome a destroying and very temporary landscape as the glacier, in particular in a historical moment when global warming is truly and harshly affecting this sort of environment. Humans and their machines flow in the opposite way nature does. Inhabitation is enabled by extreme technology; thus, on the left hand side of the drawing one can notice a long machinery that carves into the ice terraced settlements for the people in a mechanism where subtraction and addition are balanced. The top right corner showcases a walrus, the only animal present in the composition. This is highly symbolic, as to witness that the fauna of glaciers is being deeply affected by global warming, in many cases resulting in species to become endangered. The lower left corner is where most of the criticism lays, as the contemplative man present in the Romantic masterpiece by Caspar David Friedrich is put on top of a hill, overlooking the landscape being destroyed. His attention, though, is focused on the image of the tablet, which showcases the same glacier when it was still intact. This is both a criticism to the indifference of human beings towards some major themes, and to contemporary generations that tend to look at things through the screen of their devices. In this project I mainly took care of determining the composition and color palette, as well as leading the drawing production.