Marcus prize ma0

1. marcus prize 2015
portfolio
playscape
elements of a theory and practice for the interactive city

2. playscape
Architecture’s valuable duality comes from its form,
which is simultaneously language - material, proportion,
geometry–anddevice,capableofsustaining,stimulating,
obstructing forms of use and interaction. Of the two, in this
era of unstable and ambiguous meanings, of simple and
spectacular metaphors, we choose the second, aiming to
research an ethic of architecture based on performance
rather than form, and a politic based on composition as
the act of placing together and creating community.
Architecture becomes therefore a system of spatial rules,
a public game made of walls, thresholds, interfaces, that,
asthelinesinaplayground,definestherulesofbehaviour,
opportunityofusage,modalityofcommunicationbetween
different spaces.
Its value can be measured by the richness of play it is
able to offer, creating the common ground for encounter,
offering spaces and devices for appropriation and
interaction, opening the process of construction of space
to the unexpected.
playscape
elements of a theory and practice for the interactive city

3. playscape
elements of a theory and practice for the interactive city
01
Building a common ground
using the void as a primary figure
condensing the city and the green spaces
intwointenseandsymbioticenvironments.

4. / a city in the woods

8. Almere Hout
a city in the woods
date: 2007
client: City of Almere (NL)
design team: ma0 + A. Grasso
site: Almere (NL)
surface: 1024 ha
In 2006, the city of Almere (NL) invites four
firms (MVRDV, Neutelings, Must+Srkin, ma0)
to elaborate on the urban planning in the area
known asAlmere Hout, 1,024 hectares for 50,000
inhabitants.
The designers are asked to project a unified
vision along with a system able to confront itself
with the possibility of constructing a large part of
the new city by means of individual initiatives.
The masterplan proposes to construct a web
of green spaces, the green footprint, a strong,
connecting system of natural spaces dedicated
to leisure activities, bicycle paths, and sports.
This footprint is at the same time the tool to draw
a constellation of micro-cities where different
systems of rules prevail in defining different
urban identities. The footprint has therefore a
twofold value: as a network of continuous public
spaces it allows to move through the city being
in a natural context, and as an inhabitable thick
border in between the microcities - literally a cum-
finis, a shared end - it defines different identities
without separating them.

9. the green network as a sequence of public spaces and shared boundaries in between the micro-cities
from a fragmented green structure to a public green infratructure

10. the north sector and its micro-cities

11. masterplan

13. Almere Hout 2020?

14. / far west milano

15. Far West Milano
after the Expo 2015
date: 2014
client: XIV Biennale d’Architettura di Venezia
design team: ma0 with Nica Fiorini
bioclimatic consultant: Andrea Marcucci
The cities of the Far West, as we have seen at
the movies: a series of buildings along the main
street, where you will find everything: the shop,
the saloon, the barber, the sheriff‘s office. But
then, after a few steps in a sidestreet, the space
of the prairie and the pioneers, with the bushes
dragged by the wind.
Far West Milano is the union of two analogues
worlds: a linear city and 52 acres of theme parks
and hybrid productive activities, mixing advan-
ced agriculture and new technologies.
For the future of the area where the 2015 World
Expo is taking place, ma0 proposes two modes
of development that confront and feed on each
other: the city of a molar and speculative deve-
lopment alongside a territory molecularly mo-
dified by the pioneers of the economies of the
future. The decumano that will survive as one of
the few traces of this exceptional event could be-
come the catalyst of a linear city where to expe-
riment new modes to inhabit the city, in between
two worlds, two densities and intensities of two
public realms.

16. P
500.000 m2
520.000 m2
P

design principles
01 : condensing the city along the decumanus
03 : connecting with differentiated paths
02 : freeing up space for an urban attractor
04 : opening to the paths, optimizing solar exposure
05 : defining two types of green 06 : developing integrated lots

19. moving along the decumanus, from south-east to north-west

23. Far West Milano, living in between two worlds

24. playscape
fragments of a theory and practice for an interactive city
02
Building around public space
condensing the collective activities,
to multiply the interactions.

25. / section d’or

26. Section d’or
Concorde Secteur A competition
The new cultural center for the city of Vernier, in
the near periphery of Geneva, is a dense and
compact volume built around a public void whe-
re all the most public programs of the center are
located (entrance, foyer, brasserie, art gallery)
integrated with the public paths of the surroun-
dings, allowing to cross the site along a covered
street.
This void is a shining figure that excavates a grey
and mute volume, a public monument made of
nothing but of a gold communal space.
date: 2015
client: Fondation HBM Emile Dupont
design team: ma0 + 100land Thilo Folkerts
site: Vernier, Geneva (CH)
result: shortlisted for the second phase

27. the entrance to the cultural center

28. the interior street looking towards the entrance square

29. the interior street looking south towards the students’ courtyard

30. the atrium and the main foyer of the cultural center

31. the main spectacle hall

32. east profile and elevation, north-south section along the golden section

33. / the butterfly effect

34. The Butterfly Effect
Alvar Aalto University competition
As a butterfly the new building for the Alvar Aalto
University is lightly touching, lifting two wings,
the public space of the campus that flows in
continuity from the surroundings.
The built volume is deformed and folded to keep
the view towards the landmark of the conference
hall of the main existing building and to optimize
the passive and active bioclimatic behaviours of
the building, opening a large captating volume to
the south dedicated to the most public activities,
and offering a slope facing south for photovoltaics
panels.
The central path divides the building into two
parts which we could define the wing of the
practice and experiments and the wing of theory
and organization, the two poles in between which
all creative practices move.
The roofscape, where all the classrooms are
located to optimize natural lighting, evokes one
of the recurring elements in the architecture
of Aalto, the theater, in a sort of large outdoor
amphitheater, whose tiers are places to meet, to
play, but also a ground for experimentation.
date: 2013
client: Alvar Aalto University
design team: ma0 + Giacomo Ortenzi
site: Otaniemi, Finland
result: honourable mention

35. design principles and passive energetic behaviour

36. ground floor plan where all the public activities are located

37. sections

38. access fron south-west

39. the elevated streets dstributing the classrooms

40. in between the classrooms

41. the roofscape, a new ground for energy production, activities, shows and unexpected appropriations

42. playscape
fragments of a theory and practice for an interactive city
03
Offering spaces for discovery,
creative appropriation and identification
composing individualities in communities
and loosening the form-function relationship.

43. / ring around the rosie

44. Ring around the rosie
Maria Grazia Cutuli School in Herat
This elementary school has been built in memory
of the Italian journalist Maria Grazia Cutuli,
murdered in Afghanistan in november 2001.
Creating community is the keyword for this small
complex of buildings that gives to each module
its own position, identiy, and privacy, but at
the same time composes a strong collectivity
gathering them around a communal center
where the gardens and the library are.
If on one hand the overall composition creates
a sense of community without masking the
individual identities, the blue color that recalls
the traditional afghan lapis lazuli transforms this
school into a monument, an element outstanding
from its near context, but linked to an important
past.
date: 2010/11
client: Fondazione Maria Grazia Cutuli
design team: ma0 with IaN+, 2A+P, Mario Cutuli
site: Herat, Afghanistan
awards: Medaglia d’Oro dell’Architettura Italiana,
finalist | Zumtobel Group Award for Sustainability
and Humanity in the Built Environment, honorauble
mention | Prix Spéciale Hiver, Ecole Spéciale
d’Architecture, Paris 2011 | Aga Khan Award for
Architecture 2013, finalist.
VISTA ASSONOMETRICA

45. 0 2 4 10
ground floor plan

53. / yakari!

54. YAKARI!
playful landscape in Bois-de-la-Batie
date: 2013
client: City of Geneve
design team: ma0 + Stephan Meleshko
site: Geneve
The competiton project for a playful landscape in
Bois-de-la-Bâtie runs along the border between
the forest and a clearing, and condenses the
playgrounds along a line freeing up the lawn for
all the other activities.
The path with its furnishings and the playgrounds
merge and blend with the landscape thanks
to a characteristic element of the rural and
mountanin landscapes: wood, piled in stacks
on the edge of forests, or close to dwellings .
Wood, in trunks or boards, is in fact the basic
element of the project, simple, recyclable,
natural, easy to maintain and replace, able to
create diverse solutions for pathways, benches,
playgrounds.
In this park every playground is an informal space
to be interpretated by the players: here - except
for some classics like the swings - there are no
codified games, but rather mountains, platforms,
labyrinths or giant mikados to be explored and
appropriated.

55. plan

56. moving from north to south of the park

60. playscape
fragments of a theory and practice for an interactive city
04
Making interactive spaces
through simple technologies

61. DD ma0
/ sitting around

62. Sitting around
Risorgimento square in Bari
In a small square situated in the 19th century part
of the city, in front of a recently renovated school,
the project proposes, in addition to the necessary
lighting and pavement renovations, a public space
constantly reconfigurable according to the desires
of the inhabitants.
The newly designed benches rotating about a
fixed end can to be moved by the inhabitants
according to their needs: to sit in the shade on
a hot summer’s day, or conversely in the sun on
a cold winter’s day, to face the school waiting for
one’s child to exit, or the commercial area of street
waiting for an important date, or to sit under the
streetlight to allow for an evening read, or in the
dark for a sweet encounter…
Video on ma0now.wordpress.com
date: 2002/05
client: Comune di Bari
design team: ma0
site: Bari
surface: 2.055 m2
prizes: Mies Van der Rohe Awards - European
Union Prize 2011, shortlisted | European Prize for
Urban Public Space 2010, shortlisted
C
A
D E F

63. the rotating benches

64. day & night

72. / elastic space

73. Elastic space
Mocape museum competition
date: 2003
site: Shenzen, China
The competition for the Mocape museum in
Shenzen has been taken as an opportunity
to experiment a totally interactive space,
transforming a fundamental element of
architecture, the wall, in a sequence of doors.
The elastic space is a new museum entirely
conceived on this concept, articulated through
a system of rotating walls around the pillars
of the building, in order to generate multiple
configurations according to the different art
shows and display requirements.
This system is extended also to the facade, that
becomes a device to regulate the communication
between the inside and the outside, both from an
energetical and visual point of view.

74. ground floor plan

75. : spatial configurations
facade and plan configurations

76. DD ma0
the 8-bit facade screen

77. the everchanging museum space

78. a possible configuration of the skin / screen / facade

79. playscape
fragments of a theory and practice for an interactive city
05
Opening the process
to the direct intervention of the dwellers.

80. / collective mosaic
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81. Lombardi Secondary School
library and special classrooms
The new school library is in direct communication
with the internal rooms of the existing school while
simultaneously accessible by an independent
entry opening up the space to the neighborhood,
serving as a cultural center outside school time.
The project triggers a direct participation of the
community to the construction of the building,
drawing upon the school’s creative role: the design
of the facades is the result of a photographic
workshop open to ten students of the school,
selected through an open competition entitled
“draw your own facade”.
This literally superficial intervention of the future
dwellers of the library, is capable to root the
building in the context, and to transform it in a
shared monument.
date: 2004/05
client: City of Bari
design team: ma0
site: Bari (IT)

82. the site and the existing school

83. process and workshop

84. the entrance facade with the tiles numbering

88. the interior of the library, a white background waiting to be filled with books

89. / playscape

90. Playscape
Europan 7 competition
date: 2003
client: Europan 7
design team: ma0 + Francesco Careri
site: Drancy, France
result: first prize
On the outskirts of Paris, the City of Drancy asked
in 2003 for innovative solutions to adapt to the new
housing needs of the population and to upgrade
the public space of the Cité Salengro, a housing
complex designed in the ‘60s by Marcel Lods.
Playscape aims to create two playgrounds
for each of the design themes, two interactive
devices through which the people should build the
forthcoming Cité.
The first playground is made of the new loggias
added along the perimeter of all buildings, which
can be used and closed according to the needs of
the inhabitants, in fact a new soil, adding a 20% of
space to housing, making it possible to extend, or
partition the existing units.
This solution, well before Lacaton & Vassal Plus
study, proposes a strategy for renovating the
building with a minimal impact on the dwellers’ life.
The second playground is a surface of asphalt
equipped for multiple uses, reconfigurable and
adaptable to the periodic and extraordinary
activities of the district.
Both the private and the public space will be
therefore defined over time, through the direct
intervention of the dwellers and the city users.

92. section of one of the bars with the new loggias and the reshaped public ground

93. in the “blackboard” public space of the Cité

94. a possible outcome of the process on the building

95. the reshaped public ground

96. imagining Playscape some years after...