If you’re looking for a prediction, I would say that among the top ten Italian practices over the next twenty years, in amount and quality of output, there will be Corvino and Multari. For at least three reasons. The first is that as a twosome they capture the High Touch approach which makes Italian architecture speak to a broad public. The search for elegance and sophistication, cautiously experimental but with an eye for tradition and context, pragmatic in choice of technology and hence geared to a building industry that is prudent, if not conservative, but ready to invest in the forms of innovation that the “in” public appreciate: today, for example, sustainability and energy saving.
The second reason is that Corvino and Multari are banking on expanding their practice. Witness their decision to open a branch in Milan in addition to their Naples base so that they have feelers in the south, where the firm began, and in the north, where quality building, at least, is thriving. They have invested a lot of energy in competitions, getting some substantial commissions in return, and taken great care of marketing to the point of producing a DVD entitled Vesuvius, produced in concert with artist Lello Esposito.
The third reason is that this tandem works more in sync than other design teams around. Their own design work, business organization and image promotion benefit accordingly.
Corvino and Multari trained in Naples in the late Eighties. Corvino graduated in 1990, Multari in 1991. In 1995 they won the competition to upgrade Piazza dei Bruzi in Cosenza: the work hinges on a few touches of the utmost purity, including a prismatic pool in jet black marble, crowned by a Mimmo Palladino sculpture. Another competition brought them the commission of an integrated upgrade programme in Cosenza. Their plans stand out for a certain dryness and essential elegance of form. Quite the reverse of the dozens of instances of design overkill we’ve seen elsewhere over the...
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