Tell us something about your Education. How did you come to architecture? Did you meet mentors in your experience as a student? Did some architects or architectures influence you?

My interest started when I was a teenager. My passion for drawings and shapes brought me to Gropius and Le Corbusier's monographs, published by Sansoni; their pictures stroke me so deeply that I bought those books, my magnificent obsession. Later on, I attended the University of Architecture in Florence; the 90s were a special moment, when Professors from the IUAV, like Giancarlo Leoncilli Massi, Giusa Marcialis and Franco Stella came to Florence. Their short permanence let me understand precisely my intentions for the future; they were a testimony to the research work going on in Venice, a study I was deeply interested in and that I followed in magazines and publications. My mentor was Paolo Zermani, a great architect with a strong sensibility, who was clarifying in that period his viewpoint on topics such as difference and identity in architecture. Generally, I have always paid attention to great architects and particularly to certain buildings but, as a matter of fact, I can feel art, dance and cinema’s power of suggestion. Among the classics, Le Corbusier represents a guiding light, the Master, an architect who left us a sumptuously deep research on space. Among contemporary architects I admire Rafael Moneo, Francesco Venezia and Livio Vacchini's research: three different interpretations of intransigence, an idea that has always fascinated me for its sharp ability to contemplate Past, Present and Future all together.

What did the choice of travertine mean to you while working at the enlargement of the Cemetery in Gubbio?

Gubbio is one of the most incredible cities you can ever visit; it is like an enclave that has preserved its identity in the centuries. Its physical connection with Igino mountain, its close and natural scenario, is strong and intense. Gubbio is also a stone-city, built entirely with white stones that earned Francesco Di Giorgio's wonderful observations, especially for its sharp and clear light. Since the beginning, the project of the Cemetery assimilated the peculiarity of this landscape so the choice of travertine as a coating material was inevitable. Moreover, we have used travertine to enlighten a certain material continuity with Umbrian buildings, since Etruscan Age; we have chosen a colour that reminds us the one of the city, exploring the ability to give gravity to a project characterized by emptiness and silence.

Architecture is the expression of the civilization that generated it. Architecture turns tensions, ideals, and culture into permanent shapes, into stone and cement buildings. Studying Roman architecture helps us in understanding Roman magnificence. Do you think architecture still has to play the same role?

William Lethaby said that architecture is “thinking incorporated in shapes”; I love this definition because it reminds us that our actions, at any rate, require a complex thought in order not to be mere construction. The city in its complexity reflects inevitably what we are and I really hope this will last for a long time. Certainly nowadays everything is complex because it is fleeting and vacuous. Consider the new praised, skyline in Milan: embarrassing meaningless steel and glass towers, a sort of hologram, sensual pleasure full of fraud, happiness sanctified to deceit as Richard Wagner would have said. This is largely appreciated for its sensationalism more than its contents; looking glamour on pictures and on the web, as a metaphor for a liquid and globalized modernity that seems unmanageable, is sufficient.  Despite an apparent high cultural level and a potential knowledge, empty criticism dominates our society, together with an alarming ignorance, even among architects whose works do not develop a certain idea of magnificence.  And this strikes me, profoundly.  Architecture has lost its civilian aspect that makes possible to change cities and people's lives. Especially in our country, nobody is concerned with architecture anymore, even architects! It will be difficult to transmit modern-day era and its virtual aspects through the well known built shapes. Modern-day era has already been reduced to rubble and will not turn into ruins, as Marc Augè said, simply because we do not want to, even if we have created it.

Baudelaire wrote: "modernity is the transient, the fleeting, the contingent, it is one half of art, the other being the eternal and the immovable". Do you agree with this assertion? What’s your definition of modernity?

Baudelaire formulated a definition of modernity with a great clarity of mind; however, nowadays this dimension appears too rigid. The concept of Modern itself has been experiencing a crisis since a long time, then a widespread lack of criticism generated a false interpretation that too often corresponds to trends or, even worst, to meaningless avant-gardes. I agree with Francesco Venezia when he says that modernity is liberty: it is necessary to be aware that we use our heritage from the past eras as well as our present, no matter what our field is, still keeping our conscience and values. The understanding of things is timeless. This is why it is important that culture allows us to get inspiration from our whole heritage, fearless. We need to be aware that the project’s culture, responsive to values and needs, does not change in time because fundamental human values and needs do not change. Only thinking can be handed on, Le Corbusier said; being modern requires keeping and dominating cultural values with a personal critical thinking.