Comprising four partners from the Rome area - Maria Laura Arlotti, Michele Beccu, Paolo Desideri and Filippo Raimondo - with similar but different origins, characteristics and career interests, in the Italian architectural scenario, ABDR is an extraordinary example of an international contemporary architecture studio that explores the full expressive potential and the strategic role of architecture.
Since 1982, the work of the studio has diversified into many superimposed levels and directions of research which have been continuously pursued. From its commitment to the interpretation of the infrastructure in the design, in dialog with engineering, and the capacity, using form, to face the technological challenge, the urban dimension of the impact on the contemporary city achieved by architectural scale, work on the theme of public buildings, attention to the delicate rapport between old and new, each project tackles situations that are gradually more complex through an “intellectually concrete” problem-solving approach, turning restrictions into advantages that act as positive spurs, stimulating the creativeness of the architect.
The book describes the most significant episodes of the studio’s enormous mole of achievements and forms the first complete record of the projects and buildings of more than 30 years, since the studio’s foundation to the present day. Dario Costi reinterprets and orders these materials, reflecting on the themes behind the buildings, searching for the links between theoretical reflection and experimental design based on a permanent critical dialog with the city of today in all its complexity and in its construction.
An essay by Claudia Conforti reconstructs and puts into context the intellectual and professional vicissitudes of the four partners, since the years working in Rome of their youth to their present international acclaim.