Kauri Earth

Design Philosophy & Team Organization My main offices in Genoa and Paris permanently employ a team of 100 architects, together with a support staff including publicists, archivists, model makers, administrators and clerical staff. Our architects come from around the world, each selected for his or her own experience, enthusiasm and abilities. Each project is controlled by one of RPBW’s project coordinators who manages a designated team of architects and support staff from the early design stage to its completion. I personally lead each project from conception through schematic and design stage. My daily direct involvement continues until I am personally satisfied that the design proposals and concepts have been successfully achieved through close collaboration and development with the client. During the construction phase I frequently visit the site to inspect the progress and quality of the work; between these visits the project coordinator in charge of the site keeps me regularly informed on its status. I try to make my workshop a place to undertake the search for “balance,” rejecting confinement within formalism, eliminating boundaries that might interrupt my process. All kinds of materials, environments, ways of thinking, sensibilities and methodologies must combine together without any obstructions. Encompassing distinct times and objects, the balance emerging from this process generates a particular solution for a given architecture. These are the reasons why I believe that details and wholes, nature and technology, tradition and future, as well as rules and freedom can coexist without contradiction. This is the balance of my architecture. There must be a symbiotic relationship between the collective needs of the public and the personal needs of the individual, further elaborated in the rapport between the building and its environmental context.