FREE RADICALS

Federico Sargentone: First things first, how did you two meet?

Alessandro Bava: It was in 2012, at the AA, where Fabrizio was doing a master’s in history and theory and I was getting my master’s in architecture. I noticed someone dressed in a very Neapolitan way, with a proper cashmere blazer, a gilet, and Neapolitan tailoring, which at the time was my worst nightmare, because I’m also from Naples and have always associated that aesthetic with traditional bourgeois southern men. (Laughs.) But I was curious, nonetheless, and soon found out there was more to him than the cashmere gilet. About a year later, we founded a collective with fellow AA students Octave Perrault and Luis Ortega Govela for a non-official exhibition at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale. The four of us worked together for five years, first under the moniker of AIRBNB Pavilion, then, for legal reasons, under the name åyr. åyr’s research focused on domesticity in the post-Internet age, with the mantra “Freed from Design” — a play on the song Freed from Desire, which, ironically, was by Gala, the daughter of a well-known Milanese architect. Long story short, the collective disbanded in 2019, I relocated to Naples, and Fabrizio began pursuing his PhD. The two of us were carrying out projects independently but stayed in touch. In the late summer of 2022, we decided to regroup as a duo and work on a project for the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale, which was the first time we did something under the BB banner.

Fabrizio Ballabio: We weren’t entirely freed from design, it turns out.

Let’s hear Fabrizio’s version.

FB: One interesting fact is that we both, at least in the early stages of our research, orbited in the circles of a Roman architect who taught at the AA, Pier Vittorio Aureli. He had a rather radical perspective on architecture, emphasizing a discourse on subjectivity and experience — focal points that were very relevant for us as young architects living in London, barely able to afford places to stay. He got us thinking about how our daily could become an element of research in our practice.

AB: He gave us a solid Marxist grounding and framework, which is clearly a powerful tool if you’re trying to see the world more clearly.

FB: And we applied that framework to critique domesticity in the internet age. In retrospect, åyr was an attempt to kill the father. We felt that the strand of research we were invested in up until that point was still rooted in a pre-internet understanding of domesticity, while we wanted to explore the concept through a theoretical framework aligned with the post-internet debates occurring in London at that time, especially in the art world.

AB: I believe the strength of our collective was that it brought the post-internet discourse into architecture, in terms of both aesthetics and ideas. We constructed a bridge between the two world using tools that belonged to both.

You mentioned a mantra of stepping away from design. So what prompted you to come together to design things again?

AB: In my case, I felt that, after four years of running what was fundamentally an art practice, I’d become distant from what made me approach architecture in the first place: my passion for design. The situation had reached a point where I really couldn’t bear it anymore, so I moved back to Naples and I took some time off to develop my point of view, language, sensibility, and focus as a designer. Being back in Naples and Rome forced me to find a balance between the progressive and future-oriented point of view I matured living in London and the U.S. and my cultural identity as a Mediterranean. Resolving this apparent internal conflict fuels my creative practice as a designer.

FB: I come from a background that is more conventionally design-oriented. I studied architecture at the Academy of Architecture in Mendrisio, a school that is thoroughly committed to architectural design and to training competent practicing architects. This is different from the AA, for instance, where design practices are treated as intellectual, cultural projects. In this sense, landing at the AA was a revelation that allowed me to step back from the assumptions I’d inherited from my education and look at architecture from different perspectives. I developed an interest in architectural history, which I pursued by completing a master’s degree, teaching and publishing, and then doing a PhD, but I’ve always taught design studios parallel to my activities as a historian and researcher. Design has always been something that came naturally to me, like breathing. Starting the practice with Alessandro was, in a sense, a kind of homecoming.

What does it mean to you to be Italian architects and to be a Milan-based studio?

AB: The decision to have, for example, a .it domain was guided by our desire to play around with the symbolism of moving back to Italy, and the idea of “made in Italy.” Moving back here made me reconnect with what I only now realized were my own cultural and aesthetic roots. We also observed how architectural culture in Italy seemed to have lost in originality, so we felt we could maybe have a small say in where future conversations are headed. For example, the project we did for last year’s Venice Architecture Biennale — a stage we designed for a performance in the Bay or Ieranto, near Sorrento — was a manifestation of our willingness to engage with Italians and Southern European methodology, both conceptually and formally. And for Plot, our collaborative installation last spring with artist Lydia Ourahmane at the Museion in Bolzano, we engaged with a Mediterranean building technology: mud bricks dry cast from “neo-soil” made by artist Asad Raza. As for the realities of being an architect in Milan, we’re discovering them day by day.

How does the fact that you’re both writers play into your practice?

FB: It doesn’t. (Laughs.) Jokes aside, we don’t have a stable methodology. Many of our projects happen in cultural settings like museums or art institutions, which involves working with curators, fellow artists, or fellow architects. On the other hand, we also have more conventional architecture projects, where the intensity of the cultural question is slightly toned down. In terms of processes, having a background mostly as artists and writers means that we are very much invested in being personally involved in crafting. We’re not the kind of architects who see themselves as creative directors, but rather as people who design. Our work is profoundly authorial.

AB: We embraced the notion that, if you don’t have a voice as an author, it’s very hard to find a place in the market. What we offer clients is an added value that is hard, almost impossible, to measure, which is an understanding of how the art world constructs value. Perhaps that’s why we run a gallery: we understand those dynamics, and they inform our positioning in the architecture world. It’s a crossover that informs both businesses. I started zaza’ in Naples in 2019, right when I moved back from London. I rented a beautiful, small apartment from Fabrizio's family on the beach. I was feeling quite lonely, so I began using one room as an office and another for exhibitions with friends from abroad, bringing them to Naples to collaborate on projects. I wanted to build a program centered on queer practices. It quickly grew, and when I moved to Milan I was forced to transform the project space into a gallery to continue holding exhibitions. Initially just an exhibition platform, it gradually became a proper business. Fabrizio joined soon after we founded BB. He had always been involved as an interlocutor so it felt natural to involve him officially as operations started to gain momentum.

FB: There are many crossovers, but BB and zaza’ are fundamentally different businesses. Architecture is a service. It’s also our creative practice, involving elements of research, intellectual interest, and design. On the other hand, the gallery deals with tangible objects and ideas, which demands a different skill set. But both businesses depend heavily on persuasion.

AB: Both projects are also cultural endeavors first. The gallery exists solely because of its cultural mission. Our approach to shaping the gallery’s program isn’t based on commercial considerations of what might sell well in the market; instead, we aim to identify and support a generation of artists, both Italian and international, who lack widespread recognition, providing them with a platform to showcase their work. Recently, we’ve concentrated on supporting emerging Italian artists, because we feel a responsibility to foster talent in Milan. In Italy, artists often feel the need to seek validation abroad, and we aim to challenge that.

What are you currently working on?

AB: An installation for Milan Design Week. It’s an attempt to construct a place for working out that escapes the usual clichés, inspired by the writings of Gilles Deleuze, in particular his book Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation (1981). The structures we are working on for the gym symbolically manifest the undoing of workout-culture stereotypes, whose aesthetics were shaped by Leni Riefenstahl and the American 80s anabolic fitness trend, with its normative image of the body and 90-degree architectural forms.

FB: Many of our projects are exhibition design. It’s our core business. For example, in late December we completed a group show at Ordet in Milan one of the foremost establishments for showing art, in our opinion. It’s a project we hold very dear because it crystallizes our full-on architectural approach. Rather than designing display elements, we rethought the space by focusing on experiential aspects and how they affect the visitor’s interaction with the artworks. We altered the viewing experience by reopening a gate that had been welded shut since the space opened, manufacturing a de-facto new entrance. We also clad two existing columns that had become a signature of the space, alienating visitors from their habitual image of the room.

AB: We’re also experimenting with large-scale architecture projects, where we apply our cultural approach to an urban scale, and small-scale commissions that border on sculpture. Among the latter is a lodge we’re designing for a winery in Tuscany. This is the most Italian project we’ve ever done. It’s a space where the harvest is celebrated, a historical tradition since Roman times.

What do you want to be working on ten years from now?

FB: I’d like to do a sacred space of some kind...

AB: I don’t know if contemporary art spaces are something I can dream of, because I think it’s very played out as an architectural topic. So if I have to dream of something challenging architecturally, I would have to say a factory or a production space.

Church and business. Perfect!