Ecuador, China, Russia, Dubai, Mexico are just some of many places where over the years Federico Delrosso has been invited to attend conferences and conventions to present his work and the philosophy behind the formal outcome of his projects.
Let’s meet Federico Delrosso and Paola Romano, Cultural Content & Image Coordinator of Federico Delrosso Architects for a chat, welcomed in the Milanese architect’s studio.
Federico, yours is a multi-faceted and unconventional professional path, architect and designer but also an installation artist, like your project Purifying walk, which became part of the permanent collection of the Acqua Franca Museum in Milan. How do you manage to combine these different activities in the preparation of a speech to be presented in a conference?
Although every occasion is unique in its own way, all the relationships that I present at conferences to which I am invited, has a common denominator my professional history that I narrate through words and images.
How is the audience of the conferences that you are invited as a speaker and what kind of dialogue exchange is there between you and them?
The audience is usually made up of students in the industry, colleagues and insiders.With the students we create a particular connection, I give them my point of view showing a selection of my works and more generally communicating my philosophy applied to the projects that I have developed over the years and from them I get positive feedback and an appreciation that goes even beyond the moment of the conference. With colleagues instead we tend to use the occasion of the conference to discuss specific issues.
Speaking on the conference topics, which of the many conferences you have felt closer to?
There are many, one that comes to my mind is of the invitation received in 2014 from the Moscow Architecture Biennale where I presented the conference entitled “Light and Architecture”; an interesting opportunity that allowed me to share what I have been practicing in my work for years. Light as an essential component of architecture, an intangible material capable of constructing space and evoking a powerful emotionality.In Mexico, on the other hand, on the occasion of the International Fair ELA / EDI Expo Design Interiorismo, the theme was Latin architecture, following this theme I presented an intervention and an installation on the Domus Mediterranea.
Very different experiences, is there a message that unites them?
In every intervention the most important message I want to convey is the passion necessary to carry out this work. Passion that corresponds to the ability to find inspiration everywhere and to do it outside the dogmatisms of trends.
Trends in architecture and design have a longer cycle than those in fashion that burn in a few months. The flow of movement, for example, of the materials used, can last a decade, it makes no sense to settle on what the market requires in terms of these preferences, which constitute a counterproductive comfort zone. Each design choice must be made in advance, philosophical, this may mean that it will become a trend in the next ten years but above all testifies to a strong identity line, the very meaning of a search out of any rules of the market.
This is the only way to be at the service of architecture, contributing with passion to creating a value that will endure.
In fact, the architectures of Federico Delrosso are out of the fashions and rules of the market, what do you think, Paola?
All Federico’s projects are timeless, his architecture is strongly connoted and this participates in making it contemporary even after 15 years from its realization.In addition, he uses photography as an instrument to capture and at the same time lose all sense of time. Federico commissions pictures of his architecture making them immune from the passing of the years. He’s been doing this for over twenty years, again managing to escape from the fashion trends of the market, be it social communication or purley visual: it is an approach to the project that through the image is stopped forever starting from its evolution to the final realization and eventually to the rediscovery years later.A before and after through the photographs allows you to find intact his architectures in their extraordinary beauty.
April 2018