Lina Malfona
Lina Malfona (1980) is an architect and a scholar with a Ph.D. in Architectural and Urban Design. She studied at Sapienza University of Rome under Franco Purini, with whom she worked from 2005 to 2012. Since 2008, she has been both teaching Architectural Design Core Studios and working as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Sapienza University of Rome. In 2017-18 she taught as a full time visiting professor at Cornell University AAP (Ithaca, New York). She has been invited as a guest and visiting critic at many schools among which Cornell AAP, Columbia GSAPP, ENSA Paris Belleville, Harvard GSD, NYIT, Politecnico di Milano, The University of Queensland (Australia). In 2013 she obtained the national prequalification for tenure positions as Associate Professor in Italy. In December 2018, she has been appointed Associate Professor in Architectural and Urban Design at the University of Pisa. Currently she is the director of the research lab Polit(t)ico, sponsored by the University of Pisa, focusing on the relationship between architectural theory, epistemology, and the arts. Polit(t)ico is a critical workroom that uses architecture as a lens and a mirror through which to read the world of art and media, scientific and technological innovation, and the social, cultural, and geopolitical realms (https://polittico.unipi.it). Since 2020, she is Board Member of the PhD Programme DESTEC, UniPi. In 2022, she obtained the national prequalification for tenure positions as Full Professor (ASN).
Since 2007, she has been involved in drawing exhibitions and architectural competitions as team leader, receiving recognition and acclaim. She received a Special Mention for the International Ideas Competition “Europan 12” (2014), an Honorable Mention for the competition “The Europe’s Become” (2013), she got the Second Prize for the Competition of Architectural Design “Lezioni di Campus” (2009), and was among the 5 finalists in the competition “Meno è Più 3” (2006) for the design of collective facilities and public spaces in Rome. In 2015, she got the “Premio Giovani” National Award from the Accademia Nazionale di San Luca (Roma) for her built work. Her house La Villa has been nominee for the EUMiesAward 2022.
In 2007 she founded her firm, Malfona Petrini Architects. Her work – a series of case study homes in the Roman countryside – was awarded the prize “RomArchitettura” in 2014. It is part of the MAXXI Museum Archives and the MIBAC atlas of recognized Italian architectures, and was published on many architectural journals. These projects were exhibited at the MAXXI Museum in Rome (exhibition “Buone Nuove|Good News. Women in Architecture”, currently an itinerant exhibition until 2025), and in the “Architecture Room” of the Royal Academy of Arts in London, curated by Sir David Adjaye, on the occasion of the Summer Exhibition 2021-22. Her built work has been published in the book Building the Landscape (Lettera Ventidue, Siracusa 2018). In this publication, Malfona reflects on the role of authorship in contemporary design, offering new perspectives on constructing the Italian landscape. In the following book, Residentialism (Actar, New York-Barcelona 2021), she deals with the wider project for a residential archipelago that Malfona Petrini Architects is carrying out in the Roman countryside.
Lina Malfona pursued her research thanks to a number of post-doctoral research fellowships. In 2016, she was awarded the Fulbright Grant as a Visiting Research Professor at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, where she worked one year on her research project ‘Buiding Silicon Valley. Corporate Architecture, Digital Technologies and Suburban Design’. In 2017-18 she pursued her research on Reyner Banham archives thanks to a grant from The J. Paul Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles. In 2015, she was awarded a grant as Visiting Fellow at the ATCH Center at the School of Architecture, The University of Queensland, where she worked one semester. In 2018, she got the prestigious Visiting Scholarship at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montréal (CCA) for studying the Alvaro Siza archives.
As a scholar, Malfona authored articles, essays and monographs on matters related to the history, theory and criticism of architecture, focusing on the relationship between architectural form, urban/suburban space, and information technology (Il tracciato urbano, Libria 2012; Tra Roma e il mare, Libria 2014); on contemporary architectural trends (Unfinished. Sul non finito, Pisa University Press 2022); on the reinterpretation of some architectural movements of the past, like Mannerism (Indagine sul manierismo, Pisa University Press 2021); on the legacy of some masters of Italian architecture (from Giambattista Piranesi to Aldo Rossi and Manfredo Tafuri). Her writings have been published in journals like ‘ANANKE, Anfione e Zeto, Ardeth, Domus, HPA, LOG, The Plan Journal, and The Avery Review, among others.
Since 2007, she has been involved in drawing exhibitions and architectural competitions as team leader, receiving recognition and acclaim. She received a Special Mention for the International Ideas Competition “Europan 12” (2014), an Honorable Mention for the competition “The Europe’s Become” (2013), she got the Second Prize for the Competition of Architectural Design “Lezioni di Campus” (2009), and was among the 5 finalists in the competition “Meno è Più 3” (2006) for the design of collective facilities and public spaces in Rome. In 2015, she got the “Premio Giovani” National Award from the Accademia Nazionale di San Luca (Roma) for her built work. Her house La Villa has been nominee for the EUMiesAward 2022.
In 2007 she founded her firm, Malfona Petrini Architects. Her work – a series of case study homes in the Roman countryside – was awarded the prize “RomArchitettura” in 2014. It is part of the MAXXI Museum Archives and the MIBAC atlas of recognized Italian architectures, and was published on many architectural journals. These projects were exhibited at the MAXXI Museum in Rome (exhibition “Buone Nuove|Good News. Women in Architecture”, currently an itinerant exhibition until 2025), and in the “Architecture Room” of the Royal Academy of Arts in London, curated by Sir David Adjaye, on the occasion of the Summer Exhibition 2021-22. Her built work has been published in the book Building the Landscape (Lettera Ventidue, Siracusa 2018). In this publication, Malfona reflects on the role of authorship in contemporary design, offering new perspectives on constructing the Italian landscape. In the following book, Residentialism (Actar, New York-Barcelona 2021), she deals with the wider project for a residential archipelago that Malfona Petrini Architects is carrying out in the Roman countryside.
Lina Malfona pursued her research thanks to a number of post-doctoral research fellowships. In 2016, she was awarded the Fulbright Grant as a Visiting Research Professor at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, where she worked one year on her research project ‘Buiding Silicon Valley. Corporate Architecture, Digital Technologies and Suburban Design’. In 2017-18 she pursued her research on Reyner Banham archives thanks to a grant from The J. Paul Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles. In 2015, she was awarded a grant as Visiting Fellow at the ATCH Center at the School of Architecture, The University of Queensland, where she worked one semester. In 2018, she got the prestigious Visiting Scholarship at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montréal (CCA) for studying the Alvaro Siza archives.
As a scholar, Malfona authored articles, essays and monographs on matters related to the history, theory and criticism of architecture, focusing on the relationship between architectural form, urban/suburban space, and information technology (Il tracciato urbano, Libria 2012; Tra Roma e il mare, Libria 2014); on contemporary architectural trends (Unfinished. Sul non finito, Pisa University Press 2022); on the reinterpretation of some architectural movements of the past, like Mannerism (Indagine sul manierismo, Pisa University Press 2021); on the legacy of some masters of Italian architecture (from Giambattista Piranesi to Aldo Rossi and Manfredo Tafuri). Her writings have been published in journals like ‘ANANKE, Anfione e Zeto, Ardeth, Domus, HPA, LOG, The Plan Journal, and The Avery Review, among others.
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writings about city by Lina Malfona
Questi due atteggiamenti opposti e radicali – ricostruzione da un lato e riciclo dall’altro – animano il dibattito sulle nuove traiettorie che la città contemporanea dovrà perseguire, una città comunque disfatta, sfinita da una profonda crisi economica, dilaniata, almeno quella italiana, da un abusivismo congenito, causato anche da una macchina normativa cieca, fondamentalista, paradossale.
Alla città italiana, dunque, non rimane che sondare alcune possibili vie: rammendare le periferie, secondo le nobili prescrizioni consegnate alle giovani leve dall’archistar Renzo Piano, tanto distanti però dal suo mondo progettuale; tutelare quei territori fragili che si trovano in stato di rovina, e non si tratta solo di rovina archeologica, ma di una più estesa condizione rovinosa di degrado, violenza, abuso e indifferenza che investe, come un tarlo, il corpo della città; infine riciclare i luoghi dell’abbandono, nuovi monumenti di un tempo non del tutto passato.
Anche queste azioni però sono da sottoporre al vaglio, essendo dettate sempre più di frequente da un modo di procedere che quasi volontariamente rinuncia al progetto, nascondendosi dietro “buone pratiche” di gestione del territorio, visioni paesaggistiche prive di consistenza critica o, al contrario, mosse progettuali eccessivamente autoriali e autocelebrative su ruderi urbani ormai logori.
Alla luce di una situazione determinata da posizioni così contraddittorie, come si configura il rapporto tra il progetto di architettura e l’archeologia? E soprattutto, essendo la città stessa un testo archeologico, come produrre innovazione all’interno di un’operazione di riscrittura?
Conference Papers by Lina Malfona
image of an ancient, former beauty, characterized by the romantic aesthetic of decadence
and consumption, into a “bachelor machine”. The timeframe within which this transformation
can be examined is the stage of architectural Postmodernism, which began before the 1980
Biennale, with the exhibition “Roma Interrotta” (Interrupted Rome). This event introduced
new ways of understanding Rome’s ruins and the image of the city itself.
possible to see the unusual image of Rome as a city that overlooks the sea. In this area,
rich of landfalls, many buildings act as gateways, some of which of international relevance,
such as the “Leonardo da Vinci” intercontinental airport. Others accesses are
only imagined by architects, from Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s Laurentinum – his reconstruction
of Plinius’s Villa – to Adalberto Libera’s projects both for the seafront of Castel
Fusano and for the Gateway to Sea. Over all, the ancient seaport of Rome is a potential
engine of development and at the same time a symbol of historical memory. A perfect
geometrical shape, the hexagonal port’s basin seems to imitate the planimetric shape
of Rome’s historical centre that, through a translation of meaning, is cast toward the
Books by Lina Malfona
as a nostalgic myth, a dystopian habitat, or a sanctuary as a protection from wars, climate changes or pandemics. From the rhetoric of
the global village to the recent rediscovery of
the intrinsic values of neighborhood, suburban living fulfills the desire for a new environment for experiencing new models of social engagement. This book tells the story of the making of a community, one that developed with the building of an archipelago of suburban residences that reaffirm the value of the countryside within digital, technological society. Since 2010 Lina Malfona, in collaboration with Malfona Petrini Architecture and thanks to the support of structural engineer Tommaso Malfona, has been designing and building an archipelago of houses in the countryside north of Rome, which is also the location of their home-studio. This experimental residence has become a point of reference for the design of an innovative housing typology, an ‘ultra-residential’ villa as a place to experience private as well as public life.
This area is characterized by different morphological systems: large environmental bodies, such as the monumental pine forest of Castel Fusano, the presidential estate of Castel Porziano and the green belt surrounding the river Tiber, as well as large road infrastructures, railways and the centurial system created by a network of canals, developed during a large land reclamation projects during the first years of the twentieth-century. In this area, the regular mesh of the canals constructed during the afore-mentioned land reclamation, the farm paths and the rows of eucalyptuses seem to have had an influence on the urbanization process larger than the one the roadway system had, by establishing alignments, rhythms and geometries, by measuring land and limiting the extension of properties. But some large man-made marks, such as airports, ports and highways, were superimposed over that ancient image, thus altering the internal balance of the landscape. The area that was once delimited by ancient pre-existing natural formations (such as the salt marshes and ponds of Ostia and Maccarese, Tiber’s dry bend and the ancient coastline) is presently delimited by some large inhabited “turfs” that seems to emerge and disturb the quiet Roman countryside, violating the noble monumental-archeological complexes of Ostia, Portus (the complex constituted by the ports of Claudius and Trajan) and the Necropolis of Isola Sacra, among the largest and least promoted archeological complexes in the world. Not far away is the area encompassing the mouth of the river Tiber, stretching between Idroscalo and Isola Sacra, from where the two branches of coastline reaching Ostia on one side and Fregene on the other split. This last offshoot of Rome toward the Tyrrhenian, these borderlands seem to guard Rome’s nostalgic, poetic and oneiric collective imagination, made famous the world over by the movies directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini and Federico Fellini.
Writings on Architectural History Theory Criticism by Lina Malfona
Questi due atteggiamenti opposti e radicali – ricostruzione da un lato e riciclo dall’altro – animano il dibattito sulle nuove traiettorie che la città contemporanea dovrà perseguire, una città comunque disfatta, sfinita da una profonda crisi economica, dilaniata, almeno quella italiana, da un abusivismo congenito, causato anche da una macchina normativa cieca, fondamentalista, paradossale.
Alla città italiana, dunque, non rimane che sondare alcune possibili vie: rammendare le periferie, secondo le nobili prescrizioni consegnate alle giovani leve dall’archistar Renzo Piano, tanto distanti però dal suo mondo progettuale; tutelare quei territori fragili che si trovano in stato di rovina, e non si tratta solo di rovina archeologica, ma di una più estesa condizione rovinosa di degrado, violenza, abuso e indifferenza che investe, come un tarlo, il corpo della città; infine riciclare i luoghi dell’abbandono, nuovi monumenti di un tempo non del tutto passato.
Anche queste azioni però sono da sottoporre al vaglio, essendo dettate sempre più di frequente da un modo di procedere che quasi volontariamente rinuncia al progetto, nascondendosi dietro “buone pratiche” di gestione del territorio, visioni paesaggistiche prive di consistenza critica o, al contrario, mosse progettuali eccessivamente autoriali e autocelebrative su ruderi urbani ormai logori.
Alla luce di una situazione determinata da posizioni così contraddittorie, come si configura il rapporto tra il progetto di architettura e l’archeologia? E soprattutto, essendo la città stessa un testo archeologico, come produrre innovazione all’interno di un’operazione di riscrittura?
image of an ancient, former beauty, characterized by the romantic aesthetic of decadence
and consumption, into a “bachelor machine”. The timeframe within which this transformation
can be examined is the stage of architectural Postmodernism, which began before the 1980
Biennale, with the exhibition “Roma Interrotta” (Interrupted Rome). This event introduced
new ways of understanding Rome’s ruins and the image of the city itself.
possible to see the unusual image of Rome as a city that overlooks the sea. In this area,
rich of landfalls, many buildings act as gateways, some of which of international relevance,
such as the “Leonardo da Vinci” intercontinental airport. Others accesses are
only imagined by architects, from Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s Laurentinum – his reconstruction
of Plinius’s Villa – to Adalberto Libera’s projects both for the seafront of Castel
Fusano and for the Gateway to Sea. Over all, the ancient seaport of Rome is a potential
engine of development and at the same time a symbol of historical memory. A perfect
geometrical shape, the hexagonal port’s basin seems to imitate the planimetric shape
of Rome’s historical centre that, through a translation of meaning, is cast toward the
as a nostalgic myth, a dystopian habitat, or a sanctuary as a protection from wars, climate changes or pandemics. From the rhetoric of
the global village to the recent rediscovery of
the intrinsic values of neighborhood, suburban living fulfills the desire for a new environment for experiencing new models of social engagement. This book tells the story of the making of a community, one that developed with the building of an archipelago of suburban residences that reaffirm the value of the countryside within digital, technological society. Since 2010 Lina Malfona, in collaboration with Malfona Petrini Architecture and thanks to the support of structural engineer Tommaso Malfona, has been designing and building an archipelago of houses in the countryside north of Rome, which is also the location of their home-studio. This experimental residence has become a point of reference for the design of an innovative housing typology, an ‘ultra-residential’ villa as a place to experience private as well as public life.
This area is characterized by different morphological systems: large environmental bodies, such as the monumental pine forest of Castel Fusano, the presidential estate of Castel Porziano and the green belt surrounding the river Tiber, as well as large road infrastructures, railways and the centurial system created by a network of canals, developed during a large land reclamation projects during the first years of the twentieth-century. In this area, the regular mesh of the canals constructed during the afore-mentioned land reclamation, the farm paths and the rows of eucalyptuses seem to have had an influence on the urbanization process larger than the one the roadway system had, by establishing alignments, rhythms and geometries, by measuring land and limiting the extension of properties. But some large man-made marks, such as airports, ports and highways, were superimposed over that ancient image, thus altering the internal balance of the landscape. The area that was once delimited by ancient pre-existing natural formations (such as the salt marshes and ponds of Ostia and Maccarese, Tiber’s dry bend and the ancient coastline) is presently delimited by some large inhabited “turfs” that seems to emerge and disturb the quiet Roman countryside, violating the noble monumental-archeological complexes of Ostia, Portus (the complex constituted by the ports of Claudius and Trajan) and the Necropolis of Isola Sacra, among the largest and least promoted archeological complexes in the world. Not far away is the area encompassing the mouth of the river Tiber, stretching between Idroscalo and Isola Sacra, from where the two branches of coastline reaching Ostia on one side and Fregene on the other split. This last offshoot of Rome toward the Tyrrhenian, these borderlands seem to guard Rome’s nostalgic, poetic and oneiric collective imagination, made famous the world over by the movies directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini and Federico Fellini.
phases of development, from its period of militarization during the Cold War to the era of counterculture and then of cyberculture, we can reread the history of information technology’s centers of production that have contributed to broadcast the Valley’s architectural and political
image. Starting from the headquarters of Varian Associates—designed by Erich Mendelsohn and erected in Stanford Industrial Park in 1951 —and moving through the campuses that consolidated the image of creativity for which Silicon Valley became well-known in the Eighties, we will be able to have a retrospective look at the physical as well as virtual organization of
the first IT corporations which supported the rising of the most powerful medium, the internet. This paper’s origin point is the examination of three texts written by the historian Reyner Banham between 1980 and 1987, and in particular the essay “La fine della Silicon Valley” [The end of Silicon Valley], published only in Italian in Casabella. References to facts, considerations, and events, taken from Banham’s texts, pepper this study like a parallel story that problematizes this area, highlighting both its technological heroism and its approaching demise.
Questa Roma, intesa come giustapposizione di strati non conclusi, dove un tempo immobile tiene insieme frammenti diversi di presente e passato, si scontra col progetto degli studi Purini-Thermes e Transit, modello di un costruire astratto e metafisico. Tuttavia l’immagine straniata di Europarco non si pone in conflitto con la realtà urbana che l’attornia ma la perfeziona, affiancandole un suo simulacro analogico, con la consapevolezza che solo la tensione tra la realtà e la sua immagine simulata può generare quello shock che è la scintilla dell’innovazione.
La tensione tra l’oggetto e il suo simulacro, il tema del doppio, il rapporto tra serialità e incidente creativo sono tutte questioni poste e sintetizzate dall’immagine della Torre Eurosky, che si innalza sul cielo di Roma come un faro. Se l’edificio ricalca la compattezza difensiva di certe torri medievali romane, tra cui la Torre delle Milizie, la reiterazione delle logge degli appartamenti rievoca la scrittura elementare di Hilberseimer, le geometrie razionaliste di Terragni, la necessità che si fa poesia di Mies Van Der Rohe. Se la campata è la struttura spaziale che contiene il codice genetico dell’architettura di Purini-Thermes, la dimensione della loggia appare come la matrice della torre. Inoltre essa rivela anche quell’idea di invarianza formale che è uno dei nodi teorico-progettuali dell’architettura di Purini.
Mentre il carattere anti-monumentale, proprio della residenza collettiva, regola lo sviluppo verticale dei 28 piani dell’edificio, uno scatto visionario assale il top del grattacielo, che si carica improvvisamente di espressività. Analogamente agli alberi che svettavano dalla cima delle torri lucchesi, le architetture per il risparmio energetico arricchiscono di vigore plastico il monolito della torre. Peraltro, tale attacco al cielo affianca allo sviluppo seriale e fortemente iconico di Eurosky tre immagini: quella metafisica, dechirichiana, della meridiana; quella meccanica del congegno che cattura la luce solare; quella classica dei gruppi marmorei, posti a coronamento dei templi, che risolvono con l’alleggerimento delle masse murarie il rapporto tra architettura e cielo.
Com’è noto, la torre è unitaria e allo stesso tempo doppia. Essa, infatti, si lascia attraversare da una fenditura centrale che la divide in due. Ma in realtà tale fenditura la trancia verticalmente fino a una certa altezza, facendola apparire anche come un brano di acquedotto romano. Inoltre, se si guarda al diverso trattamento dei due prospetti, quello verso il mare e quello rivolto verso Roma, si può notare come la torre sia anche bifronte. Se verso il mare, si fa porta di ingresso alla città, sul fronte opposto essa rivela un aspetto antropomorfico.
Il rapporto tra l’Eur, Europarco ed Eurosky dimostra quanto la città sia un riferimento costante per le architetture di Franco Purini e Laura Thermes. Elemento misuratore e sistema di orientamento visivo, la torre è direttamente proporzionata alla scala urbana e, come le masse scultoree del Bernini, è calibrata nei suoi spessori in base alla distanza da cui viene osservata.
modo storicamente più completo e criticamente più preciso
la figura di Marcello Piacentini a cinquant’anni dalla morte, il
convegno sull’autore della Città Universitaria della Capitale,
curato da Giorgio Ciucci, Franco Purini, Simonetta Lux e
Livio De Santoli, si è tenuto il 16 e il 17 dicembre a Roma
in tre diverse sedi: la Facoltà di Architettura “Valle Giulia”,
l’Accademia di San Luca e l’Aula Magna della Sapienza.
Il convegno ha focalizzato nuovi temi e smentito un certo
numero di convinzioni radicate e spesso approssimative
sull’opera di un architetto colto, aristocratico, prolifico, inclusivista
e contraddittorio.
In Memoriam presents tombs that architects design for themselves, in the past and the present, as a starting point in a conversation about memory and death in Architecture. What do we as architects choose to remember and honor—and how?
Exhibition credits
Curators:
Jerome Tryon
David Schaengold
Luka Pajovic
Participants:
Barozzi Veiga
Adolf Loos (as drawn by David Schaengold)
Deborah Berke
Samantha Mink
Fala
Erin & Ian Besler
Miles Gertler
Lina Malfona
Mark Foster Gage
Enric Miralles (as drawn by Jerome Tryon)
Cazu Zegers
Sam Jacob
John Soane (as drawn by Jerome Tryon)
Clark Thenhaus
Alan Maskin & Juan Ferreira of Olson Kundig
Igor Bragado
Christopher Wren (as drawn by Luka Pajovic)
OMMX
Aniket Shahane
Barclay & Crousse
Ariane Lourie Harrison
Young & Ayata
Jože Plečnik (as drawn by Luka Pajovic)
Peter Baldwin
Margaret McCurry & Stanley Tigerman
Brian Delford Andrews
Bryan Cantley
Mimar Sinan (as drawn by David Schaengold)
Níall McLaughlin
Flores & Prats
Stephen Slaughter & Aaron Tkac
Neri & Hu
Acknowledgements:
Kurt Forster
Mark Foster Gage
Mary McLeod
Margaret McCurry
Bryan Fuermann
Kyle Dugdale
Andrew Benner
Alison Walsh
The Yale Architecture Gallery Staff
La Città è anche l’ecosistema in cui viene riscoperta la dimensione deontica dell’ambiente, spesso grazie al “fare” delle persone che vi abitano, inventando nuove collaborazioni che finiscono per avere una vocazione rigenerativa. Nascono contaminazioni, si accentuano diversità, l’informale rincorre il formale e viceversa.
Gli esperti e le esperte del panel si confronteranno sulla Città che conoscono, per illustrare al pubblico quali sono i profili irrinunciabili che devono essere garantiti a livello politico nazionale e europeo, per non tradire le speranze di ben-essere delle persone e per evitare il sorgere di insopportabili disuguaglianze.
Polo didattico Porta Nuova, Università di Pisa
ARX Portugal, Un percorso obliquo
Architecture held the exhibition Corner,
Block, Neighbourhood, Cities. Alvaro
Siza in Berlin and The Hague, which
focused on two of Siza’s social housing
commissions: the building Bonjour
Tristesse (1983) and the Punt en Komma
(1989). My project analyzes the roots of
these works in the Siza’s projects for the
social housing settlements in Bouça and
São Victor, which he built under the
revolutionary auspices of SAAL.
Through a reading of his texts,
drawings, models and interviews, this
project highlights the political vision
hidden behind the poetry of Siza’s use of
language. As one of the protagonists of
the housing revolution in Portugal, Siza
points out the role of architecture in the
processes of sociocultural development
and the integration of migrants.
Lina Malfona, an architect and scholar with
a Ph.D. in Architectural and Urban Design,
has been working as a visiting professor
and postdoctoral research fellow at the
School of Architecture of the University of
Rome Sapienza since 2009. She has
authored essays and monographs on
matters related to the theory of architecture
and to the relationship between built form
and urban space. In her latest writings, she
has analyzed the form of the city as a
critical and political device for social and
architectural innovation. She has pursued
her research thanks to a visiting fellowship
at the ATCH (The University of Queensland),
a grant from the Getty Research Institute,
and a Fulbright scholarship at IFA (New
York University). She founded her
architectural firm, Malfona Petrini Architetti,
in 2007.
Lina Malfona was a Visiting Scholar at the
CCA in 2018.
legibles en la propia sede de la empresa. Hoy en día, mucho más que en el pasado, la intensa red de conexiones en línea parece tener sus propias zonas fortificadas: los campus de IT, los laboratorios de investigación y las sedes de los gigantes de internet aparecen como nodos físicos de
producción de tecnologías digitales y fomento de la conectividad global, pero también como nuevos bastiones de control y poder. Una suerte de militarización hace de estos centros lugares inaccesibles y fortificados,
lo cual, paradójicamente, produce un modelo espacial que, en vez de conectar, separa. Entre las compañías multinacionales de tecnología, Apple es el ejemplo fundamental de una corporación que sirve a un
mercado global y que, al mismo tiempo, desafía, por medio de su sede central, las nociones de espacio virtual y físico, de conexión y separación, de centralización y colonización.
form, global market, and digital technologies, this
essay investigates the controversial nature of the corporation,
between real and virtual, local and global
space. The writing contains two intersecting paths
of reading. On the one hand, it focuses on the latest
building of the Apple enterprise, which is analyzed
through a formal as well as metaphorical comparison
with some previous architectural experiences, including
both the Stanford academic campus and the Royal
Saltworks of Chaux. On the other hand, the paper
focuses on the strategies used by Apple Computers in
the construction of its competitive image, and passing
through a reading of primary data, such as early
experiences, products, commercials, and buildings,
it analyzes the proper company’s style, that we can
define as “Apple Architecture”.
Indeed, our time carries deep similarities to the sixteenth-century crisis. Political, economic, and cultural instability walk alongside a new kind of Copernican revolution: that is, the evolution of information technologies—as powerful as they are ambiguous—that have generated such a vigorous transformation as to alter, duplicate, and overturn our very sense of reality. Jean-François Lyotard had already announced this revolution in 1979, when he launched Postmodernism with La Condition postmoderne. Postmodernism as an artistic tendency shares some undeniable affinities with Mannerism, so much so that today it is difficult to read Mannerism without the postmodernist lens. The similarities between these two movements concern their common propensity for intellectual games, subversions of the canon, variations of scale, caprices, scenic design, and a tendency to carry out a dialogue with history. But episodes of crisis and subsequent re-appropriation of the past occur cyclically, and Mannerism itself can be seen as an underground current that emerges every so often in the art history. Is it therefore appropriate to speak of yet another mannerist condition today? In this light, the proposed investigation is a tool to understand this suprahistorical condition and to launch it in a future perspective.