@cinozucchiarchitetti@cza___r
The “Doors of the Twelve Months” for Milan’s De Castelli Showroom.
De Castelli is a wonderful enterprise specialized in the fabrication and surface treatment of sophisticated metal artifacts.
The overall aim of CZA’s design for their Milano showroom in an old seventeenth hundred palace is not only to create spaces for welcoming clients and showing their products, but also to represent in its own forms the potentials of their craftsmanship.
CZA conceived a triple layer of metal doors enriching the existing wooden portal.
The larger one enables to leave the existing one open all night, leaving a misterious blade of light mark the place when closed.
The second is the proper entrance, with its elaborated double helix handle. On this one, we envisaged an interchangeable metal panel in twelve different laser-cut versions. Each month of the year, this custom-designed metal sheet cha be easily taken down and substituted with the next one, continuously refreshing the image of the place, acting like a “living calendar” for the public realm recalling the tradition of ancient astronomical clocks.
#decastelliofficial #metalworks #cinozucchi #cinozucchiarchitetti
@cza___r
I can “ignite” the fuse of our new Instagram site “CZAr” (please assign to the suffix “r” whatever meaning you feel more comfortable with: research, restlessness, rage, revisited, rewind, refresh, refinement or any others) with an homage to my second greatest idol after Paul Valéry, that is Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo.
Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo was a Milanese painter lived in the second half of the sixteenth century in the period of Carlo Borromeo and his rather strict precepts of what is known as Countereformation.
In my personal yet temporary intention, the “r” in CZAr stands for “Rabisch”, which in “facchinesco” dialect means “Arabesques” or “Grotesques” (by the way, “facchino” means “porter”, and most of porters in Milano came from the very poor Ticino valleys. “Rabisch” was the title of a number of funny and licentious poems written by Lomazzo in his doppelgänger role of “Compà Zavargna, abbot of the Bregno valley porter academy”; his well-known self-portrait pictures himself as such, in a funny and transgressive mock-up of an erudite academy playing vulgar, rustic roles.
Unfortunately, Lomazzo remained blind at the age of 35, and had to move forcibly from the art of painting to the art of writing on artistic theory.
I have no space here to refer to his theories of the “Disegno interno”. in the quarrel between Neo-Aristotelians and Neo-Platonics - or between Leonardo and Michelangelo, the first one claimed that art is the imitation of nature while the seconds, including Lomazzo, thought that this is not enough and you needed a “disegno interno” (today we would call it a “concept”) sent directly by God into our brains.
Re-reading his “Idea del Tempio della Pittura” I just ran again in few astoundingly beautiful definitions of the “Moti”, that is the manners you should paint beings or objects of different nature to give them life; among them the “Vegetabile” (Vegetable) you give to flowers or leaves moved by the wind; the “Elementale” (Elemental) taking different forms in the four elements; the “Insensato” (Senseless) given to ropes, feathers, veils, cards, hair: and finally, the “Accidentale” (Accidental) given to ruins, catastrophes and similar things.
#CZAeditions
“The infamous rebellion of the rigorist mob against the alleged constructive honesty of classical orders” is the first issue of the CZA booklet, the studio’s internal publication series: a space that documents how theoretical research intersects with, nourishes, and guides architectural constructive practice.
This first issue investigates whether, and to what extent, architectural form should be the expression of a constructive diagram, a question that has been the basis of an endless number of quarrels over time.
In his essay, Cino Zucchi examines how the presumed wooden origin of the classical orders undetermines their authority if subjected to the modern classical honesty trial.
@cza___r is CZA’s search-mode space.
Text by @cino_zucchi
Book design by @isarallala
Editorial coordination by @marinat_barbieri
The work of @cinozucchiarchitetti , is presented by Luigi Spinelli through complementary interpretative lenses: a deep familiarity with the stratifications of the European territory; the ability to trigger transformations within consolidated traditions; a focus on the building envelope as an interface between domestic space and the urban scene; the capacity to translate heterogeneous cultural and formal influences into architecture; and the ongoing search for the appropriate “character” for each theme and place. Each chapter reveals points of contact and overlap within a compositional process that is at once rigorous and open.
@cino_zucchi
Author: Luigi Spinelli
Published by: @letteraventidue_edizioni
The simple fascination of the tetrahedron-octahedron space-filling system…..
Among the Platonic solids, once questioned the primacy of the cube as a space-filling unit, we are caught by the endless possibilities given by the addition of octahedrons (whose two opposite triangular faces are parallel to each other) and tetrahedrons which added to the previous one on each face trace the vertexes of a cube.
After inventing the phone, Alexander Graham Bell and his wife started experimenting with large modular kites based on tetrahedral-octahedral lattices. Larger prototypes could carry the weight of a man in the air, and be considered first attempts of manned flight.
Many years later Anne Tyng inserted in Louis Kahn’s research her cutting-edge ideas of three dimensional structures.
I have a collection of perfectly octahedron-shaped fluorite crystals, and I often find myself disposing them in a way to form tetrahedral voids among them….
Una poesia.
Una poesia ottenuta attraverso la semplice sostituzione, nel titolo come nei versi, della parola “poeta” con la parola “architetto”.
La poesia originale è di @catalanoguido , nel mio giudizio il più grande poeta italiano vivente.
La mia alterazione della sua poesia corrisponde quasi esattamente (poiché possiamo ancora scegliere di leggere un libro o ascoltare un disco, ma ogni architettura è in fondo imposta a tutti nella città o nel paesaggio, e quindi ha sempre una dimensione forzatamente ‘pubblica’) al mio pensiero sull’architettura. 🙂
Ecco qua la poesia, mi scuso con il Sommo per l’alterazione indebita:
L’architetto
L’architetto, una cosa. Una cosa deve fare l’architetto non è che sia un lavoro così difficile, l’architetto l’architetto, non è che sia un mestiere così complesso perché all’architetto, signori gli si chiede una cosa che è una all’architetto gli si chiede siediti mettiti comodo e progettane una bella ecco cosa deve fare l’architetto il resto, tutte minchiate che uno al tassista cosa gli chiede? guida e all’avvocato? difendi e al sarto? cuci e al medico? cura e al muratore? costruisci e al maratoneta? corri e quelli guidano e difendono e cuciono e curano e costruiscono e corrono poi arriva l’architetto che lo vedi già da lontano l’architetto lo riconosci che l’architetto arriva da lontano e lo vedi tutto gesticolante tutto ansioso con le gote arrossate i capelli scompigliati le scarpe spaiate arriva e ti vuole spiegare e ti vuole dire e ti vuole far capire come funziona e parla e ti spiega e parla e ti racconta e parla e ti delucida e parla e ti illustra e parla e ti commenta e parla e ti parafrasa e parla e ti interpreta e parla e ti insegna e parla e ti chiosa e a un certo punto fa: posso farti vedere una casa? tua? gli chiedi sì e lì nove su dieci è una martellata nei coglioni ma di quelle pese.
Che basterebbe poco, l’architetto l’architetto, basterebbe poco capisse che una cosa gli si chiede una cosa che è una gli si chiede siediti mettiti comodo e progettane una bella.
#CZAnews
“The Mystery of the Missing Triglyph” art exhibition by #JavierMayoral aka @pulpbrother at CZA Cino Zucchi Architetti studio, Via Revere 8, Milan
Opening hours:
April 5th–13th: Monday to Saturday, 5:00 PM – 8:00 PM – no reservation required.
April 14th–May 9th: Monday to Friday, 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM – reservation required by emailing [email protected] or via the dedicated online form (link in bio).
Conversation event:
Sunday, April 6th, at 6:30 PM – A conversation between Javier Mayoral and @cino_zucchi , moderated by Livia Satriano @liviasatriano (@libribelli_books ). Reservation required by emailing [email protected] or via the dedicated online form (link in bio).
For the occasion, Libri Belli will curate a selection of books from the CZA library.
Read more at zucchiarchitetti.com
Trystan Edwards spiegava il concetto di ‘urbanità’ usando il suo sinonimo di ‘buone maniere’ o ‘galateo’.
Un galateo non è prescritto dalla legge, ma dal ‘costume’; esso è il frutto di un’obbedienza volontaria a un codice condiviso, una sorta di equivalente fisico del ‘contratto sociale’ di Hobbes.
Nell’intersezione urbana di piazza del Rosario a Milano, tre edifici di epoche e destinazioni diverse obbediscono a questo galateo, dando forma agli angoli degli isolati orientati a 45 gradi alla maniera del plan Cerda di Barcellona.
Il quarto intervento, un supermercato Esselunga costruito qualche anno fa sul lotto restante, non solo ignora del tutto questo galateo, ma in un certo senso lo deride bordando il margine urbano con le rampe del parcheggio e con degli sguaiati cartelli indicatori su tralicci in acciaio zincato.
Lo spregio finale è in fondo la facciata dell’edificio stesso, col suo finto paramento in cotto, la sua cornice con assonanze “classiche” e la sua glorietta con orologio “alla Aldo Rossi”: ridicoli simulacri di un’architettura ‘contestuale’ che tenta invano di mitigare la logica di ‘macchina commerciale perfetta’ incapace di fare i conti con qualsivoglia forma urbana.
Che poi abbia trovato tutto ciò che avevo segnato sulla mia lista della spesa, e che rimanga qualcosa anche per le gazze mangia-wusterl è un altro paio di maniche, e non rimargina la ferita nella città e nel mio cuore: “Il pleure dans mon cœur/ comme il pleut sur la ville”. :-)
Asnago and Vender’s apartment house in via Col Moschin is one of their earliest works (1939), still permeated by a straightforward ‘rationalist’ mood but already showing in its watermark some of their later explorations. Too bad that they changed over the years the sliding fiber panels to obscure the windows with more conventional rollers.
I still remember how they brilliantly solved the issue of privacy in the bathrooms: their windows (the ones adjacent to the two sides) where of the same size of the other vertical ones, but they contained in their vertical sliding panel a horizontal slit that could be left open for a nude person to look out….
For some reason,
I always thought that this project could be the perfect backdrop of a “Common Man” (or a “Man without Qualites” as Ulrich in Robert Musil’s novel). Today I rode in front of it with my Vespa and I almost did not notice it.
Adolf Loos state that the elegance of a man should coincide with his capability to “disappear” in a group of peers sharing a convention, and reveal himself to others only by little, somehow imperceptible features or details.
In his rather original work “L’architecture à la française” Jean-Marie Pérouse de Montclos argues that one peculiar feature of French architecture is the competence on the complex geometric problems posed to the stone cutters by double curvature vaults.
From the famous “trompe” of the Anet castle designed by Philibert de l’Orme for Diane of Poitiers to the seamless vaulted surfaces of Bordeaux’s Notre Dame or archibishop’s house, he sees a number of realizations where the total continuity of the surfaces without decoration or moldings was certainly meant to express the ability of stone masons to perfectly trace and sculpture single blocks so that - once assembled together - they would form a single continuous curved surface.
This geometric art is called “stereotomy” and was elaborated and transmitted in time through a number of treatises and manuals.
I have to say that in the design of the office building in Bordeaux I put all my “classical” knowledge, from the geometric rules of a column’s enthasis and rastemation (two concepts which are often confused: one refers to the bulging out and the other to the diminishing of the diameter of one fourth from bottom to top) to the complex sectioning of revolving solids as the one of the big pillar which marks the corner entrance; and of course to the beautiful egg color of Bordeaux stone.
#architecturealafrançaise #cinozucchiarchitetti #bordeauxeuroatlantique
