Guido Zuliani
Professor
Guido Zuliani is an architect and an educator. He graduated 'summa cum laude' from the Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia In the summer of 1980. In 1982, after the license exam, he became a registered architect. After graduation Mr. Zuliani began his academic activity as researcher at the Dipartimento di Progettazione Edilizia of the Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia until 1985.
In 1981/82 Mr. Zuliani was invited as Teaching Assistant by the Ecole d'Architecture de Nancy, France, and in the summer of 1984 as Visiting Critic and Lecturer by the University of Pennsylvania in Venezia. In 1990 Hochschule der Kunst and in 1996 the Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia invited Mr. Zuliani as Visiting Critic and Lecturer.
In the summers of '94 and '95 Mr. Zuliani founded and directed the International Workshop for Architecture and Urbanism in Venezia that had seen the participation of students from USA, Italy, Germany and Denmark. In 1996 Mr. Zuliani was shortlisted for the position of Resident Artist and Director of the Architecture Department at the Cranbrook Academy of Art. In 1998 Mr. Zuliani was elected member of the Accademia delle Scienze, Lettere ed Arti degli Sventati in Udine.
He has lectured at the School of Architecture of the University of Ljubliana (1995), at the Fondazione Ronchi-Casa Malaparte (1995), at the Zenobio Institute-Laboratory for the new urban landscape (1996), at the Cranbrook Academy of Art (1998), at the School of Architecture of the Mississippi State University (1999), at the Dipartimento di Urbanistica of the Istituto Universitario di Architecture di Venezia (2000). He has been teaching at the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture of the Cooper Union since the Fall of 1985.
As an architect he has worked on projects ranging from retail spaces to individual houses, renovations and small competitions. He has collaborated to numerous projects with the architect Raimund Abraham and recently he has worked as Project Architect for the office of Eisenman Architects.
Projects & Links
MUSÉE DU CONFLUENCE
MUSÉE QUAI BRANLY
Fossoli Park and Memorial
A public park and a memorial at the WWII prisoners camp in Fossoli, Modena, (It) 1991
The competition called for the restoration of the WWII prisoner camp in Fossoli, its transformation in a memorial for the war prisoners, and for the design of a public park. The coupling of the two programs, a park, furnished with playgrounds, outdoor cafe and restaurant, and the remains of a prisoners camp trnsformed into a Memorial, presented an obvious and significant challenge.
The design solution originated from specific considerations given to the area's landscape, an horizontal surface disseminated by finite artifacts such as farm houses, roads, irrigation canals, and from a criticism to the tradition of public parks landscaped picturesquely or by perspectival axis.
The park, a finite artifact consisting of two parallel linear promenades contained within a unified "constructed section" and located at -1.20 m. and +0.60 m., is at the same time part of the anthropic landscape and privilege point for its unconventional observation. In plan the two promenades form an arch, a negation of the perspectival tradition, anchored at its extremities by two parking area and, on the north side, by a recreational area equipped with playgrounds and outdoor cafe.
The proposal for the camp is also divided in two part. The northern area, the area of the prisoners' barracks, was to be repaired and consolidated in its actual state of ruins. The southern part of the camp, characterized by a small variety of different buildings and defined by brick paving, contained all the public functions required by the competition; an adjacent area was to be excavated so to create a depression in the landscape, a site for public ceremonies furnished with three auditoriums and a service building.
17th-Century Tower
The project called for the structural consolidation of a XVII century tower, damaged in an earthquake (1976) and for its transformation, together with the adjacent two stories smaller structure, in a dwelling for one occupant. The historical nature of the artifact suggested also the maximum reduction and concentration of the interventions.
The architectural exploitation of the structural requirements, the intersection between the structural (the tectonic) and the programmatic (the body), was assumed then as the focus of the design with the intention of creating multifunctional nodal elements functioning simultaneously at different programmatic levels.
On the ground floor, inside the smaller building, the connective structure of the bathtub determined by the under foundations allowed for the articulation of a domestic landscape produced by the "imprint" of the body of the inhabitant: a sleeping area and a bathroom are located here.
Upstairs, a portal-like element in reinforce concrete is inlayed in the wall between the small house and the tower; with its tie-rods it is the stabilizing element of the central wall; the opening produced by the very same tie-rods functioning as a forceps connects the two buildings allowing for the insertion of a stair bridging the difference between the two adjacent floors; the particular solutions to the two approaches to the stair define it as an interior, as a space in itself; the architrave of the portal consists of a composite steel bean tied to the armature of the concrete supporting the ridge beam of the roof of the lower building.
On the top floor a radial element provides to the stability of the oversized, but typical for these type of buildings, roof structure.
