2A+P/A

Some buildings become part of the collective imagination.

Palazzo e Torre Rasini by Gio Ponti and Emilio Lancia are among those rare works capable of condensing an entire idea of Milan into a single urban figure.

This drawing was conceived as a tribute, not a representation, but an interpretation. By isolating and recomposing the building through an axonometric view, architecture becomes both image and narrative, revealing hidden relationships between geometry, colour and the city.

Conceived as a ceramic piece, the drawing leaves the page and becomes a design object in itself. The architectural image acquires materiality, transforming into an artefact that can be produced, exhibited and inhabited within everyday life, continuing a dialogue between architecture, design and craftsmanship that was central to Gio Ponti’s own work.

The work was exhibited in 2019 at the Italian Cultural Institute in Stockholm as part of the exhibition “Omaggio a Gio Ponti”, celebrating the enduring legacy of one of Italy’s most influential architects and designers.

Learning through collaboration.

At the beginning of our practice, collaboration became a method.

Working alongside figures who had shaped our architectural imagination was not simply an opportunity to develop projects together. It was a way of testing ideas, questioning assumptions and building a shared intellectual ground.

The collaborations with Andrea Branzi and Gian Piero Frassinelli profoundly influenced the evolution of our research. Their work continues to resonate in the way we approach architecture today, not just as a reference but as a critical attitude to cultivate.

1. Art Forest - Maribor Contemporary Art Museum with Andrea Branzi
2. Globalized Bauhaus - Bauhaus Museum Dessau with Andrea Branzi
3. Ethnographic Museum In Budapest with Gian Piero Frassinelli
4. Central Archive of Human Cultures with Gian Piero Frassinelli

Museum for Contemporary Art, Panama

Architecture rarely begins with a building.
It begins with drawings, models, conversations and a continuous process of testing ideas.

For this competition proposal for the MAC Panama, sketches, physical models and digital representations were developed in parallel. Each medium became a way of exploring the project from a different perspective, gradually transforming an initial intuition into an architectural proposition.
Especially in this project that is the result of an amazing collaboration with luca galofaro_stefania manna_associati and OCHAP | Office for Cohabitation Processes sharing ideas, point of views and methodologies.

Conceived as a permeable organism, the museum establishes a continuous dialogue with the city. By day, its photovoltaic façades generate renewable energy; by night, they become a public interface, projecting images, sounds and artworks back into the urban landscape.

The project proposes a museum that extends beyond its own walls, where architecture becomes both civic infrastructure and cultural medium.

Three ways of thinking architecture.

Architecture is not only what gets built.
It also exists as a territory to explore, a model to test, and an image capable of generating new possibilities.

Maps, Models and Pictures is built around these three dimensions. Not as categories, but as complementary ways of observing, representing and imagining architecture.

The book brings together projects, drawings, exhibitions and research developed over fifteen years of practice, tracing the relationships that connect them.

1. Rome East: the city of collective rituals
2. On Aldo Rossi
3. 36 drawings (The house of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera)

Maps, Models and Pictures is available through the link in bio.

Maps, Models and Pictures is not a monograph.

It is an atlas of references, projects, drawings, buildings, exhibitions, patterns and speculative visions that have shaped our way of thinking architecture.

For us, architecture has always been built through connections: between images and ideas, research and practice, history and future.

Maps, Models and Pictures is an invitation to read those connections.

Available online through the link in bio.

Maps, Models and Pictures is not a monograph.

It is an atlas of the ways we work.

Over the last fifteen years, our projects have moved continuously between territories, scales and disciplines—from competitions to built works, from teaching to exhibitions, from editorial research to construction sites.

Maps, Models and Pictures collects this journey, not as a chronological archive but as a constellation of drawings, photographs, texts and models that reveal architecture as an ongoing process of research.

Available through the link in bio.

ART FOREST
2A+P/A with Andrea Branzi

On the occasion of “Continuous Present. Andrea Branzi by Toyo Ito” at the Triennale di Milano, we commissioned to produce a new model of the project Art Forest, the contemporary art museum in Maribor designed with Andrea Branzi in 2012.

The model, developed by Marco Galofaro, reveals the relationship between above-ground and underground spaces, highlighting the idea of a “territorial architecture” envisioned by Branzi.

Special thanks to the entire team for their dedication and precision 🫶

On view at the Triennale di Milano until October 2026.

Photo: .dlkr

COMPETITION ENTRY
Waterfront of Nicotera