The talk was being given by one half of Fabrizio Barozzi, Italian architect Alberto Viega. He was literally only in Bangkok for 24hrs having flown all the way to give the lecture at IMPACT. I didn’t know whether to be flattered or somewhat insulted- Bangkok’s awesome, is his time really that precious? was the fuel used in his transport really that insignificant? I digress…
The architecture of this office is straight out of a periodical. The images are sublime. Are they renderings? are they renderings from the thesis project of a highly talented student – no. Apparently they’re real!
Let me share a few of these (photographic) images with you:-
Headquarters of the Regulatory Board of the Denomination of Origin Ribera del Duero. Image published in: METALOCUS-020 | P01 | p. 60
Do you see what I mean? The buildings make the most amazing images. Did they conceive the image and then design the buildings? A breath-taking clarity of vision in collaboration with brilliant photography.
In spite of Alberto presenting public buildings at a conference on the theme of ‘reinvented home’ and explaining how the Bundner Kunst Museum extension and schemes Duero scheme were so generous in public space due to being able to hide the building underground (a solution most of us are not able to implement) I will most definitely be seeking out their work for architectural pilgrimage. I was particularly taken by the way in which the filmy white pitched roofs of the Szczecin Philharmonic seemed to blend beautifully into the translucent skies behind the branches of the deciduous trees. For me that is a particularly poetic architectural gesture.
The work of Fabrizio Barozzi is most definitely architecture with a capital A. It didn’t seem to fit into the conference necessarily but I greatly look forward to experiencing the spaces in the future.