Thoughts

Antarctic Resolution advocates the rejection of the pixelated view of Antarctica offered to us by Big Data companies and urges the construction of a highresolution image focusing on the continent’s unique geography, unparalleled scientific potential, contemporary geopolitical significance, experimental governance system, and extreme inhabitation model.

Title: Antarctic Resolution
Editor: Giulia Foscari / UNLESS
Authors: 150 interdisciplinary specialists
Publisher: Lars Müller Publishers
Editorial assistant: Federica Zambeletti
Design: Giulia Foscari / UNLESS with Integral Lars Müller
Printing: Grafiche Antiga, Italy
20 × 26.4 cm, 1000 pages
Hardcover, English
2021, ISBN 978-3-03778-640-6
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Visiting the villas built by Andrea Palladio (1508–1580), one inevitably asks oneself how people lived there in the sixteenth century. Palladio articulated the villas as "small towns" (piccole città) that formed a unit with adjacent service buildings and farm fields. Within their walls lived a multitude of people of all ages, social backgrounds and various skills. They were the venue for significant moments of public life. In these houses, the principles of hygiene, privacy and comfort, which we consider essential today, did not apply; furniture as such, did not exist. Living with Palladio in the Sixteenth Century investigates how Palladio’s houses, their floors, rooms and measurements are designed to structure the life of such a heterogeneous family of people. It analyzes their hierarchical structure with the owner (padrone) at the top and everyone involved in the everyday running of the household (famiglia minuta) at the bottom. This book fills a decisive gap in research literature on the famous Italian architect by looking at how Palladio prioritized the domestic functions of his private buildings.

Title: Living with Palladio in the Sixteenth Century
Author: Antonio Foscari
Editor: Giulia Foscari
Design: Integral Lars Müller
Details: 10,8 × 20,4 cm, 4 ¼ × 8 in
128 pages, 71 illustrations
hardback2020, 978-3-03778-638-3, English

At the AA Museum Lab students were introduced to the schizophrenia of the real life of architects - constantly oscillating between thinking and designing, writing and building, working in isolation and participating to collective efforts - by means of developing two parallel projects: a temporary pavilion for the Fuori-Salone del Mobile in Milan and a personal investigation on the paradoxes and role of contemporary museums.

Stimulated by a dense programme of specialized seminars and by innumerable guided visits to museums, galleries, art fairs and archives, the research project challenged the students to reflect on the paradox­es of contemporary museums and their current ideological, cultural, social, structural and tech­nological transformations. Responding to predetermined topics of investigation, each student constructed a thesis by unveiling unknown narratives, often belonging to the realm of art history, through the unique perspective of an architect.


Project Title: AA MUSEUM LAB: THE MANIFESTA EDITION
Location/City: London & Milan
Dates: 2016-2017
Status: Completed
Program: Diploma Unit
Academic Institution: Architectural Association School of Architecture
Course: Diploma 15
Unit Master: Giulia Foscari & Ekaterina Golovatyuk
Unit Tutor: Giacomo Ardesio & Harikleia Karamali

On the occasion of the 15th International Architecture Biennale, the German Federal Foundation of Baukultur hosted a series of events in Venice. A network meeting of European Baukultur institutions served as kick-off and aimed at expanding the international network. In order to deepen the exchange an international conference about complementing the city was held in cooperation with the German Center for Venetian Studies. The symposium was accompanied by a guided exhibition tour at the Doge’s Palace and an evening reception. Palazzo Querini Stampalia and its renovation by Carlo Scarpa was presented as best practice example. Together with the IBA Parkstad cross-border cooperation’s as a contribution to city planning and Baukultur were discussed. Participants were invited to take part in guided tours through the city and across the Biennale.

The investigations of the AA Museum Lab on the role of museums and cultural institutions, their paradoxes and transformations, is carried forward focussing on the Mediterranean and its epicentre: Palermo.

Aiming to reveal unknown practices of cultural production in the city and in the sites of origin/destination of its fluctuating and (at times) temporary population, the students are invited to develop their thesis project based on independent research and to articulate their findings though an expanding collection of work-books critically edited, designed and produced. Ultimately formatted in provocative media of choice, the individual projects will be presented in Palermo in form of a collective exhibition – an official Collateral Event of Manifesta.

Project Title: AA MUSEUM LAB: THE MANIFESTA EDITION
Location/City: London & Palermo
Dates: 2017-2018
Status: Completed
Program: Diploma Unit
Academic Institution: Architectural Association School of Architecture
Course: Diploma 15 
Unit Master: Giulia Foscari
Unit Tutor: Giacomo Ardesio & Harikleia Karamali

The result of a two-year research studio with the Harvard Graduate School of Design and collaborations with a host of experts from industry and academia… Elements of Architecture looks under a microscope at the fundamentals of our buildings, used by any architect, anywhere, anytime: the floor, the wall, the ceiling, the roof, the door, the window, the façade, the balcony, the corridor, the fireplace, the toilet, the stair, the escalator, the elevator, the ramp. The exhibition is a selection of the most revealing, surprising, and unknown moments from a new book, Elements of Architecture, that reconstructs the global history of each element. It brings together ancient, past, current, and future versions of the elements in rooms that are each dedicated to a single element. To create diverse experiences, we have recreated a number of very different environments - archive, museum, factory, laboratory, mock-up, simulation. 

Title: Elements of Architcture 
Editor: Rem Koolhass 
Team: AMO [Janna Bystrykh, Federico Martelli, James Westcott]; OMA [Antonio Baron, Rebecca Bego, Ben Davis, Giulia Foscari, Alice Grégoire, Caroline James, Sofia Koutsenko, Brigitta Lenz, Elizabeth Macwillie, Tiffany Maria Obser, Mikel Orbegozo, Cedric van Parys , Stephan Petermann, Nicholas Potts, Todd Reisz, Annie Wang, Eric Williams, Sergio Zapata], HARVARD GSD RESEARCH TEA [Cynthia Dehlavi, Heather Dunbar, Elizabeth Eckels, Elle Gerdeman, Andrew Gipe, Patrick Hamon, See Jia Ho, Jenny Hong, Kangil Ji, Alison Kung, Will Lambeth, Jingheng Lao, Alison Ledwith, Stefan Di Leo, Arthur Liu, Jielu Lu, Difei Ma, Elizabeth Macwillie, Kurt Nieminen, Tiffany Maria Obser, Nicholas Potts, Annie Wang, Eric Williams, Max Wong]
Art Direction & Design: Irma Boom & Bo
Publisher: Marsilio, Taschen
20 × 26.4 cm, 1000 pages
Paperback, English
2014, ISBN 883172018X
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