ASA STUDIO ALBANESE MONOGRAPH

An illustrated cartography of our firm's works

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We are pleased to present the monographic volume dedicated to our firm, just published by Electa in a double Italian and English edition.
It is a general cartography of the work of Asa Studio Albanese in over fifty years of activity and design. Accompanied by a rich iconographic apparatus, the volume summarizes, through a selection of very different and heterogeneous cases, the architectural signature that has always distinguished the spirit of the firm: its substantial and conscious eclecticism. The style and language of each project is determined by the use of references and inspirations not necessarily to references and inspirations not necessarily strictly related to architecture as a discipline, used as filters to interpret contingent factors such as the historical context and the functional program. the historical context and the functional program.

Client
Asa Studio Albanese
Year
2023
Status
Completed
Size
288 pages
Team
project Flavio Albanese

Flavio Albanese
founder & partner

Flavio Albanese (1951), is founder and president of ASA studio albanese. He is a self-educated designer, by combining his passion for contemporary art with the practical experience of an artisan-architect. Having come into contact with Carlo Scarpa, he learns from him to avoid an “a priori” approach to design, adapting on a case-by-case basis to the occasions, themes and contexts. He has held courses at the École Polytechinique Fédérale in Lausanne and at the Art Institute in Chicago (1980), at Yale University (1983), at the University of Architecture in Delft (2005), at the University of Florida (2006), at the Fundacion Proa de Buenos Aires (2008) and frequently at the most important Italian universities. He has also held two workshops at the international summer school of the Architecture School in Venice in 2009 and 2010. He was a member of the Confindustria Vicenza committee from 1998 to 2001, the Domus Academy Scientific Committee (2004-2005) and the MIart Committee of Honour (2009 and 2010), director of the Officina del Porto di Palermo (2006-2008), vice president of the Andrea Palladio Architecture Firms International Centre (2011-2015) and president of the Fondazione Teatro Comunale Città di Vicenza (2010-2016). From 2007 to 2010 he was asked to head Domus, the prestigious international architecture, design and contemporary art magazine. Active since 1971, in 1987 he founds with his brother Franco ASA studio albanese. The studio's projects were published by the most most important architecture and design magazines: the Neores project was selected for the Mies van der Rohe Foundation European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture (2003), and ASA studio albanese took part in Venice's Architecture Biennial in 2004 and 2006. Flavio is an avid reader and bibliophile (his library, which is open to the rest of the firm, contains more than 15.000 volumes) and he is a connoisseur and collector of contemporary art.

team Francesco Marangoni

Francesco Marangoni
3d models & digital printer supervisor

Francesco Marangoni (born in 1982) graduated in Political Economics from the University of Verona in 2007. After working as a projectionist and usher in the historic Odeon cinema in Vicenza, he happened upon ASA studio albanese in 2006. Here he has helped arrange and catalogue the more than 15,000 volumes contained in the firm's library. He then devoted himself to creating architectural models with a CAD/CAM pantograph and a 3D Zcorp 650 printer. Although he has founded and is involved in the production side of a small web radio station, he insists on listening to Radio3 in the models room on an analogue radio. In his free time, with variable results, he tries to indulge in his passion for reading, music and travel. From the studio library he'd borrow Codex Seraphinianus, while his favourite media is beer.

Giuseppe Santonocito

Giuseppe Santonocito
communication manager

Giuseppe studied philosophy in Venice and Paris, completing his research doctorate in 2006. Since 2007 has managed ASA studio albanese's communications, dealing with new acquisitions for the Library and taking part in key concept and project philosophy planning. From 2007 to 2010 he was a regular contributor to Domus magazine, providing articles, research and reviews, as well as working as editor on the books section for several editions. Before joining ASA, he was assistant librarian at the Museum of Modern Art in Ca' Pesaro in Venice (from 2001 to 2005). As a freelance copywriter he has produced concepts and text for various projects, working with the digital storyteller Felice Limosani on “Il sole sui tetti” 2011 and 2012, with the Fondazione Gaetano Marzotto for the Progetto Marzotto 2013, and with Intertrade Group and Agenzia del Contemporaneo for Pitti Fragranze 2014. He was a tutor at the summer workshop of the Architecture School in Venice in 2009 and 2010. The often exceedingly loud music blaring through his AKG headphones includes Radiohead (and never Coldplay), he loves wide open spaces that aren't very city-like, such as Berlin, and he prefers red wine to white.

Partners
Giovanna Crespi (Electa) Paolo Tassinari, Maddalena Piana (Tassinari Vetta)
Images credits
aa.vv.
Website
www.electa.it/en/product/asa-studio-albanese-2/

Asa Studio Albanese has been collaborating since the early 1980s with major design brands such as Driade and Rossitex. In the 2000s the Studio focused on the themes of post-industrial cities and the relationship between production hubs and the landscape. In 1999 the studio designed the Sinv headquarters in Schio (selected in 2003 for the Mies Van der Rohe Award shortlist), and the Ventura 15 project in Lambrate in the context of Mutti & Architetti’s masterplan. In 2000 they worked on the Morimondo 17 project in Milan’s Navigli and their headquarters in Vicenza, realised in the converted premises of the former Rumor printing works.

In 2009 Asa Studio Albanese designed the Verdura Golf & Spa Resort in Sciacca for Rocco Forte Hotels, and in 2010 the new Rinascente store in Palermo. Their 2011 design for the Lindower 22 cultural compound in Wedding, Berlin is a further example of the application of post-industrial logic to an urban setting, while the Hybrid Tower Mestre (2012) is a multifunctional landmark that redefines the urban-industrial landscape at the crossroads between Mestre, Marghera and Venice. The studio returned to the retail sector in 2018 as the designer of choice for the Thom Browne NY brand for their new flagship stores around the world. In 2019 work started on the new Masterplan Villas for the Rocco Forte Verdura Resort in Sciacca.
In this long and articulated path in architecture, the firm has never given up deepening and updating its reflection on living, founded from the beginning – as Francesco Dal Co notes in the preface to the volume – on a principle of hospitality and welcome that has never been waived, and which is clearly perceived in every category of work: both in the numerous residential architectures of different scales and destinations, in the hospitality and retail projects, and in the collateral experiences of a more properly cultural imprint, in which the complexity of the multidisciplinary interests that founder Flavio Albanese has been able to transmit to the firm is manifest.

Forewords are by Francesco Dal Co and Alessandro Benetti.
Graphic design is by Tassinari Vetta.
Editing is by Milena Archett.i
English translation is by Richard Sadleir.