International magazine of architecture and project design september / october  2020

Emotional materails

With the conviction that it is difficult for an architectural magazine to illustrate the efforts and research that lead to the realisation of an idea, Area, with this issue, would like to bring to light that approach to work ignored with a superficial glance. Each issue of the magazine speaks out loud about materials, however, it seems to us only right to devote an issue exclusively to this theme as we would like to reflect, as well as on the technical possibilities of new or old materials, also on the development of a critical stance that opens up infinite points of debate. Observing a building from the point of view of its materiality will allow us to dissect the nature of the building itself and illustrate aspects that are not only technological. The aesthetic and emotional effect that the appropriate and innovative use of materials gives the project will be the leitmotif of the selection contained herein. With Archea Associati, we have always sought an emotional approach to the materiality of the building. The material is not just a cladding, nor a mere structural solidity, nor a pure necessity, and even less a standard application. The material is a possible strategy for the execution of a very specific concept that considers the client’s needs, the execution context, the available budget and above all a clear communicative idea. In the Albatros campsite, for example, the use of wood determines a silent and respectful insertion into the landscape, the material adapts to the sinuosity of the forms, giving a feeling of rest for the eyes and the soul. The belief that has guided the studio’s projects since the beginnings has been the ability of a building to enter into dialogue, at times with the urban fabric, at others with the rural environment and above all with the individuals who become its users. The choice of a material has something definitive in it: the clear unveiling of an idea. When this idea is powerful, an intense research phase becomes mandatory to identify the most appropriate way to express the potential of the selected material and the robustness of the concept. “The impeccable smoothness of a large marble wall or the perfection of a duralumin window is an element of aesthetic enjoyment, the juxtaposition of rigid and shatterproof iron with fragile, translucent glass is rich with accents of modern dissonance. It is a source of intense aesthetic emotion and completes a large and majestic wall of vitrified bricks or travertine slabs or metal plates”. With these words, Giuseppe Pagano poetically puts the technological means and the materiality of architecture in close relationship with its emotional behaviour, that is, the ability of the single building or urban context to lead people towards desired sensations of well-being and pleasure. The materials therefore tell us the story of a building, they tell us about a context and forms that are often linked to functions. They tell us of a past story, but also of a future one through the experiments they are able to carry out. Observing a building from the point of view of its materiality offers us great critical possibilities, it leads us along a path that touches multiple themes and not just material. Because the building itself is material.

Laura Andreini

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