Anna Rita Emili-Architect Barbara Pellegrino-Engineer Emanuele Piccardo-Consultant Gabriele Coccia Collaborator

The activity of altro_studio mainly addresses the new ways of living the house: temporary, flexible, transformable, mobile ways of living the house. Understanding the new needs of the individual, both on a functional and on a structural level, is what propels altro_studio in its research about new technologies (mainly automation) and new materials with particular reference to the problems of environmental sustainability. altro_studio can take project starting form preliminary planner up to executive planner, and consider new technology and new materials as important instrument for contemporary good planner.

altro_studio was set up in 1998 by a group of people willing to work in an inter-disciplinary environment (at first the group was composed by one architect, two artists – one of them belonging to the Stalker group –, one historian and urban planner and some collaborators). Taking its cue from the idea of inter-disciplinary activity, altro_studio has developed, from the very beginning, a research stemming from the specific field of housing, starting from nomadic housing (temporary house) and ending with the living unit. The activity mainly addresses the new ways of living the house: temporary, flexible, transformable, mobile ways of living the house. Understanding the new needs of the individual, both on a functional and on a structural level, is what propels altro_studio in its research about new technologies (mainly automation) and new materials with particular reference to the problems of environmental sustainability. Our inspirations? Being firmly convinced that architecture is a perfect synthesis of science and art, my inspirations are, on one hand, as I said before, the facts determining the reality around us (this finds expression in the use of new techniques and materials), and, on the other hand, the study of the various arts: music, philosophy, literature, but above all the figurative arts. Art has always been the utmost expression of political, cultural and social thought and is typically expressed and developed long before architecture. The knowledge of art as well as an artist’s mindset are essential components of the spirit of an architect. It is this “artist’s mindset” that distinguishes a real architect from a mere technician of architecture. Our ambitions are to look constantly ahead, at the world around us and project it into the future. Our goal is to offer real answers to the kind of problems that increasingly affect the reality we live in. What we are talking about are events affecting the entire planet such immigration, mobility, complexity, etc., or natural phenomena such as desertification, hurricanes, floods, etc., or even computerization, an increasingly fast communication, etc. … Our purpose is to discern, based on social, anthropological, political experience, what will be the developments of future society without omitting near-future scenarios that might be not so optimistic. In that case, our message becomes a warning that cannot be ignored