Studio - ARW

ARW founded in 2016 as a workshop that turns a specific situation into a reflection and into a statement concerning the meaning of architecture. lead by two architects and founding partners Camillo Botticini (1965) and Matteo Facchinelli (1977) who propose a research able to synthesize meaningful architectural forms and deal with contemporary living spaces and their meaning, from an urban scale to that of the object.
The practice is constantly looking for the project’s site-specific identity as in the best Italian tradition, able to be local in a global world an essential reference point.
Architecture is a result of relations within a specific place and inclined to transform the perception of space. the dialogue between the concept of an idea and the conditions of the surroundings generate the juxtaposition in which the design transformation interval is placed. the complex settlement of landscapes becomes the reference material: so the geography, the historicity of the surrounding areas, the environment with its contradictions, the morphological and altimetric features, the orientation of the plot are all factors that generate the project.

Expressive economy of architecture and space, wanting to be necessary but critically distant from trends and formalisms, nourished by history, not merely reproducing it but capturing it in its primary elements and structures.

Portfolio

Founders

Camillo Botticini

Biography

Born in Brescia on March 11th, 1965, graduated in 1990 in architecture at the Politecnico University in Milan. in 2003 obtained a PhD in Architectural and Urban Design (“Relations, design and identity in contemporary architecture”).
A university assistant since 1993, in 2004 he began his career as a lecturer in architectural design as a visiting professor at the Politecnico University in Milan, the IUAV University of Venice, the Universidad de Navarra in Pamplona and lately at UEL University, London.
His main publications include “Progetto relazione ed identità dell’architettura contemporanea” for Clup (2007), the monograph on Mansilla and Tunon for Testoimmagine (2002) and “Urban strategies” for Maggioli (2017).

Prizes and publications

He has received important architectural awards such as the special Award Gold Medal for Italian Architecture 2012 and the First Prize of the Italian Institute of Architecture in/ Arch- ance as the best young Italian architect 2006. He was also selected for the Mies van der Rohe Award in 2007 and 2014. He is still among the finalists of international architecture awards such as Wan Award, A prize, Copper Prize Batimat, Hauser and Ugo Rivolta and has been selected several times with his projects at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2000, 2010, 2014 and 2018.
These awards underline a test-bed on concrete examples, in a synthesis between pragmatism and research in the design phases.
His works are published in some of the most important architectural magazines such as Casabella, Domus, A10, Mark, A.D. Metalocus,
Detail, Hauser and in the Phaidon Atlas of XXI century architecture.
His point of reference in architectural projects is the complexity of a fragmented and versatile world: the interpretation of this world is always different and articulated and varies in according to the themes and the specific conditions of the context.

Matteo Facchinelli

Biography

Architect and designer, was born in Brescia in 1977. In 1999 he won the Erasmus scholarship in Brussels, where he attended his third year of university at the Victor Horta institute with professor and Architect Dominique Perrault. He graduated in architecture from the Politecnico University of Milan in 2003.
From 2003 to 2006 he lived and worked in Paris with internationally renowned studios, such as Massimiliano Fuksas’ and Francis Soler’s ateliers, devoting himself to numerous competitions and projects.

Through this training, he acquired an aptitude for the management of important and complex projects, which now allows him to coordinate and manage workgroups for different types of architectural interventions at different scales. He also won two competitions in France where he made relevant work, which led him to be appointed as a finalist for the Gold Medal for Italian Architecture in 2016 and for the French trophée Eiffel in 2017.
He was a lecturer at L.A.B.A. (Libera Accademia di Belle Arti di Brescia) in 2011 and architectural design assistant at the Politecnico University of Milan in 2012.

Administration

ARW: “There is an inclination towards synthesis, to the need for an architecture that is at the same time intense, sensual and material.”

Intervista