Italy Now? Country Positions in Architecture

What does it mean to practice architecture today? 
Does Italian architecture exist? What characterizes it?
What values and objectives do you refer to when designing your architecture, and why?

These are the questions recently put to 20 cutting-edge architectural firms working in Italy today. The answers come together in Italy Now? Country Positions in Architecture, which presents the architects' written responses in parallel with their design work.

Edited by Alberto Alessi, the book also contains critical essays by Pier Vittorio Aureli and Gabriele Mastrigli. Noted Italian photographers Gabriele Basilico, Francesco Jodice, Armin Linke, and Alberto Muciaccia have contributed their visions of Italy—the land and people as well as the architecture—to deepen the context of this book.

Based on an exhibit held at Cornell University as well as on two related conferences, one in Ithaca and the other in New York City, Italy Now? offers an intriguing look at contemporary Italian architecture—its physical expression and the thinking behind it.


Contributors:
Critics:
Pier Vittorio Aureli
Gabriele Mastrigli

Architects:
ABDR
Benno Albrecht
Cliostraat
Corvino + Multari
Cristofani & Lelli
Nicola Di Battista
Cherubino Gambardella
Garofalo Miura
IaN+
Itaca Architetti
Labics
Antonella Mari
Vincenzo Melluso
Metrogramma
n!studio
Efisio Pitzalis & Geneviève Hanssen
Beniamino Servino
Vulcanica
Cino Zucchi
5+1AA

Photographers:
Gabriele Basilico
Francesco Jodice
Armin Linke
Alberto Muciaccia


Alberto Alessi is an architect and curator based in Zurich. He teaches architecture theory at the HTA in Luzem and recently curated the international colloquium Spaziarte on the relation between contemporary architecture and art. He is the author of a monograph on Heinz Tesar (2002) and coauthor (with Jo Coenen) of Shared Architecture (2006).

Mohsen Mostafavi is dean of the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning and the Arthur L. and Isabel B. Weisenberger Professor in Architecture at Cornell University. From 1995 to 2004 he was chairman of the Architectural Association School of Architecture, and before that director of the Master of Architecture I Program at the GSD, Harvard University. His recent publications include Approximations: The Architecture of Peter Markli; Surface Architecture (coauthor David Leatherbarrow), which won the 2004 Bruno Zevi CICA Book Award; and Structure as Space.