The story of Massimiliano Fuksas, a Roman architect of Lithuanian origin who was born in Italy but spent much of his early years in Central Europe, is one of a progressive conquest of important design opportunities and renown, to the point where he has now become one of the best-known Italian architects on the international scene.
After a decade spent designing experimental buildings in Central Italy, between 1970 and the early 1980s, Fuksas found important opportunities for work in France and began to establish an international reputation. From 1985 onward he realized a series of major public works in that country, including schools, housing estates, universities, media libraries, cultural spaces and museums, showing how necessary it is, in the life of any talented architect, to be given the possibility of doing something concrete, of putting into practice the fruit of his reflections and researches. In 1995 Fuksas returned to Italy and re-opened his studio in Rome. In 2000 he was appointed director of the International Exhibition of Architecture at the Venice Biennale, staging an event that included the work of many members of the new generation of architects and attracted great interest all over the world. This volume, while illustrating visually the more important of the works he produced between 1970 and 1990, tends to focus chiefly on the ones constructed over the last fifteen years which have earned him the international standing he enjoys today. The new Ferrari headquarters at Maranello, the “bubble” buildings for Nardini, the Armani stores in Singapore, Hong Kong and Milan, a new commercial building in Turin and the new seat of regional government in Piedmont, the Peace Center in Jaffa commissioned by Shimon Peres and Yasir Arafat, the new Conference Centre in Rome, the Twin Towers in Vienna and the shopping malls in Salzburg and Hanover are just some of the works realized in these years, culminating in the new Milan Trade Fair, the largest in Europe and a symbol of the city’s revival, inaugurated just a few months ago. The volume shows the works and projects he has produced at a feverish pace, arranging them in the form of a story told in acrylics and including sketches, drawings, structural details and photographic reportages, along with a series of short, exclusive interviews with some of the clients who have played an important part in Fuksas’s work in recent years, from Giorgio Armani to Walter Veltroni and the Nardini family.
Massimiliano Fuksas was born in Rome on 9 January 1944 to a father of Lithuanian origin who worked as a doctor and an Italian mother who taught philosophy. He spent the early years of his life first in Rome and then in Vienna, before returning to Italy where he studied under the poet Giorgio Caproni and frequented the studio of Giorgio de Chirico. In the capital he set up his first professional studio with Anna Maria Sacconi in 1967, and two years later graduated with a degree in architecture from La Sapienza University under the tutelage of Ludovico Quaroni and Bruno Zevi.
The early period of his activity was characterized by a series of works located chiefly in Central Italy, up until the “discovery” of his work by French critics that led to the first invitations to take part in international competitions and an increasingly successful career in France from 1985 onwards.
In the mid-eighties he began to collaborate with Doriana O. Mandrelli, with whom he opened studios in Paris (1989), Vienna (1993), a new studio in Rome (1995) and another in Frankfurt (2003).
Between 1994 and 1997 he served on the planning commissions of Berlin and Salzburg and became a member of the board of the Institut Français d’Architecture.
Over the course of his career he has received numerous awards and honours, including: the “Vitruvio Internacional a la Trayectoria” in Buenos Aires (1998), the Grand Prix d’Architecture Française (1999), his election to the Accademia Nazionale di San Luca and appointment as Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres de la République Française (2000), the Honorary Fellowship of the AIA (2002) and his election as a member of the International Academy of Sofia (2003) and of the Académie d’Architecture in Paris (2004).
In 2000 he was director of the 7th International Exhibition of Architecture at the Venice Biennale entitled City: Less Aesthetics, More Ethics, and in the same year began to contribute to the weekly L’Espresso, taking over the section dedicated to architecture from his former teacher Bruno Zevi.
For some time he has been visiting professor at the Staadtliche Akademie der Bildenden Kunste in Stuttgart, the Ecole Spéciale d’Architecture in Paris, the Akademie der Bildenden Kunste in Vienna, the Institut für Entwerten und Architektur in Hanover, Columbia University in New York, and La Sapienza University in Rome.
He currently lives and works in Rome and Paris.
Born in 1966, Luca Molinari graduated from the Faculty of Architecture in Milan in 1992 after a period of work and study spent at the Faculties of Architecture of the TU in Delft (1989) and the ETSAB in Barcelona (1990-92).
Expert on materials at the Milan Faculty of Architecture from 1994 to 1997 and lecturer in the course of ‘Theory of Architectural Composition’ at the Ascoli Faculty of Architecture from 1998 al 2003. He currently teaches courses of Contemporary History at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Naples II. Guest professor at the School of Architecture of the Academy of Fine Arts in Guang Zhou (China), he has held conferences and w”orkshops at numerous universities in Italy and abroad, including the TU in Delft, Columbia University, GSD Harvard, MIT and the URA Singapore. Since 1993 he has been Promuvendus in the Ph.D. course coordinated by Prof. Alexander Tzonis at the TU Faculty of Architecture in Delft, with a research work on Ernesto Nathan Rogers and Italian post-war culture. He has contributed to several Italian and foreign magazines, including Abitare, Domus, Lotus, Il progetto, Area, Archis, L’architecture d’aujourd’hui and the Italian edition of Vanity Fair.
In recent years he has prepared exhibitions and supervised various events linked to the world of architecture and contemporary art, including: Santiago Calatrava. Work in Progress (designer and curator, Triennale, Milan), Le forme del cibo (curator, Opos, Milan), Stalker (Opos, Milan) and I sentimenti del 2000. Arte e fotografia dal 1960 ad oggi (designer, Triennale, Milan), Effetti Collaterali (curator, Triennale, Milan), Medaglia d’oro per l’architettura italiana (curator, Triennale Milan), Piero Portaluppi (curator, Triennale, Milan), the first Festa per l’architettura in Italy (Triennale, May-June 2004) and Antinapoli (with C. Gambardella, F. Jodice, F. Ippolito and V. Trione, Naples, 2005).
Since 1995 he has been editor-in-chief for the Design and Architecture sector of the Skira publishing house.
From 2000 to 2003 he was chairman of the committee of experts for the ‘Progetto Portaluppi’ on behalf of the Fondazione Portaluppi.
From 2001 to 2004 he was coordinator of the architecture and town-planning sector of the Milan Triennale as well as a member of its committee of experts.
He works as a consultant for public and private institutions in the field of architecture. He is currently coordinator of the Naba School of Design, Milan.
He has published the volumes: Barcellona: architetture e spazi urbani 1975-1992 (Milan, 1993), Il grande libro di Laus, with Mario Fosso (Lodi, 1995); Santiago Calatrava (Skira, 1998, Italian, English, Spanish and French editions) and Atlas - Trends of North American Architecture. 1990-2000 (Skira, 2001, Italian, French and English editions).
He has also supervised the reprinting of Ernesto Nathan Rogers’ books, Esperienza dell’architettura (Milan, 1996) and Lettere di Ernesto ad Ernesto e viceversa (Milan, 2000) and edited, with Mirko Zardini, the monographic issue of Archis devoted to Italian contemporary architecture (no. 7, 1999) and, with Paolo Scrivano, Arquitectura Italiana del posguerra/Post War Italian Architecture (2G, no. 15, 2000). In addition, he has edited Effetti collaterali (Milan 2002), La medaglia d’oro per l’architettura italiana (Bologna 2003), Piero Portaluppi. Linea errante nell’architettura moderna (with the Fondazione Portaluppi, Milan, 2003) and Italian Metamorph (A+U, Tokyo 2005).
italiano
francese
Frank O. Gehry dal 1997 
Dominique Perrault 
Gae Aulenti 
Richard Meier 
