Raimondo Guidacci was born at Foggia in 1968. He studied architecture at Venice and graduated in 1995. His dissertation was supervised by Carlo Magnani, a teacher belonging to the cultural milieu of Vittorio Gregotti though with a mind of his own and a spirit of pragmatism that distinguishes him from the Zen architect’s excessive rigour. As well as studying architecture, Guidacci attended the Benedetto Marcello Conservatoire of music where he obtained his diploma that same year. His first work experience was at Orsara in Puglia to which he commuted from Turin where he was on the strength of the Polytechnic for several years and in 1996 opened his own professional practice. It was two houses at Orsara completed in 2004 that brought him to the notice of the inside talent-spotters. Though these were first efforts, they speak of mature professionalism deployed in five directions. The first of these we might call abstract contextualism. This approach consists in pursuing modernity while avoiding any clash with the surrounding context. Within the contemporary idiom it entails choosing a repertoire of line and figure that is on a compatible wavelength with the pre-existing buildings. In this it stands apart from mimicry – that present-day trend which municipal regulations and superintendency restrictions are enforcing in many quarters and which unthinkingly copies the urban context, obsequiously picking up stylistic traits and materials in a kind of revivalist kitsch. In the case of Orsara Guidacci opted for elementary geometrical figures, preferred simple harmonious relations, used horizontal and vertical alignment so as to keep a coherent interface with the visual history of the place, and chose white since that is so widely found in the region. Such a line has been adopted extensively in Spain and Portugal; so we have this Puglia-born, Venice-educated Turin adoptee throwing out references to Álvaro Siza and Eduardo Souto de Moura. The second feature is essential solid shapes and a plastic sculptural quality. To Guidacci architecture is an ideal yet rational object. Hence it cannot be disturbed by accessories or ornaments breaking up the purity. Nor indeed by organic or neo-plastic mis-arrangement emphasizing one line of force at the expense of others. The ideal is form in all its stereometric purity. Inside these Orsara houses there is some sliding of volumes, but even this serves to construct, not upset, the balance, conjuring plurality of direction from unity of conception. The third point partly follows on the second, but also owes something to the architect’s musical education: that is, a striving for perfection of execution, almost to a maniacal degree. Precisely because the plans strip everything to essentials, he has to prevent guttering, eaves, aerials or chimney-pots from spoiling it. But note, such minute care for detail is always kept within the bounds of manual know-how. “My work,” Guidacci explains, “takes place in the solitude of my studio and calls for knowledge of materials and techniques and constant comparison of notes with the craftsmen doing the work”. We are thus far removed from the ideal of high-tech mechanical perfection where perfect finish belongs to a process based on industrial techniques even when only mimicking their results. Here the ideal is not series or component production but the tailor-made suit. Somewhat after the thinking of Adolf Loos , who happens to be one of the architects who have most inspired Guidacci. Loos ties up with the fourth line of research: the sharp distinction between the architecture’s urban dimension as belonging to the public domain, and its individual psychological domestic side. Hence a certain closure about the elevations, and certainly not expanses of glass, contrasting with the greater freedom of the interiors where spatial sequences are more transparent, rhythmically arranged around the key nodes of the staircases. The fifth and last dimension is colour and materials. This one glimpses at Orsara where the elevation plays on a contrast between the white purity of the render and the warmer texture of wood – though there is also the natural stone cladding of the steps and the stainless steel of the two balconies. The twin houses at Candiolo in the province of Turin can be construed as a logical outcome to the groundwork laid at Orsara. The difference being that here the iconic component is more felt. It might seem a post-modern regression to play on the house archetype of the pitched roof. But the sloping roof was actually a building regulation requirement, and Guidacci’s work anyway seeks two goals. The first is to prevent the two dwellings from taking on a vernacular image. He thus gives them a tight geometrical orientation, as well as cleaving the façade by a large loggia. The second is to clean the rheinzink roof of all excrescences: for this he invented a kind of ‘technical’ roof-ridge in which to hide away all superfluities including chimneys. Guidacci relates that the colour was meant to be red like the house at Trofarello, again near Turin, in deference to the poetics of abstract contextualism – brick-red being a recurring feature of the Turin area. (It is my view – as one who doesn’t really believe in any form of contextualism, that official enforcement of white in the end has benefited the abstract effect of the two structures.) In his two buildings at San Mauro Torinese Guidacci tackles the task of transforming a banal shell. His upgrade exploits the scope afforded by adding a second ‘skin’ in which the apertures do not quite coincide with what went before, creating deliberate stratification and an interesting splayed quality. The addition of a roof, again of the pitched variety, gives a vaguely domestic note to this otherwise flat construction. But what I consider his masterpiece is the recently completed single-family villa at Orsara. This ten-metre-sided cube is given character by hollowing it – apparently challenging the volume, actually picking it out. It recalls works by Peter Eisenman and Giuseppe Terragni, though without the linguistic excesses of the former or the destructive energy of the latter. Here elegance and a sense of proportion prevail. There is a stone plinth, the idea being to invert the traditional ‘trullo’ structure which has rendered walls and a stone roof. Lastly, Guidacci has done a large number of interiors. Once again they show a taste for detail, for the grain of the material, the variety of visual stimuli. Warm dark colours predominate. Dialogue with the outside, especially in the lightest cases designed in Puglia, is actually more apparent than real since the light colours outside are challenged by darker materials, while inside the reverse effect is achieved. Luigi Prestinenza Puglisi