Nàbito Arquitectura was born from the volounty of two italians adopted by Barcelona, Alessandra Faticanti and Roberto (Bebo) Ferlito. Today the jazz background that covers the telephone voices is coming from Bebo’s office. And with him, this morning, I’ll talk about their projects, about how to export Italian architecture abroad and how to import it from Catalunia to Italy. FL: Hi Bebo. BF: Hello Francesco. FL:: Can you hear me clearly? BF: Yes, perfectly. FL:: Cool. What kind of music are you listening to? BF: Some Jazz… FL 01: I like it. Does jazz accommodate your way to design? How is music involved with you and with your office? Is there a specific kind of music for each project phase? BF: Like our designs, our music is very eclectic: we listen to online music without labeling it. Every day we have different random music. The Internet takes us to different spaces and times, not only through music: it’s a sensation vortex between the real and virtual worlds. We are accustomed to designing in a hypersensitive state, always subjected to a thousand solicitations, from the present, past and even the future; our projects follow these sensations. Some offices restrict Internet access to their workers, but we encourage our staff to focus not only on their drawing, but on all the actions that surround a project. In this way, the studio becomes a real cultural enterprise. FL 02: How does Nabito relate to new medias? How is your work, and the architect’s work in general, affected by new, specialized online magazines? BF: Interesting. As we were saying before, the old concepts of work, with a fixed pay, with a pre-established timetable, no longer have a “raison d’être.” Leisure is an opportunity for renewed activity; the generator (through new forms of communication and intellectual interaction) of a process that radically changes space and time in cities and between them. It produces a cognitive surplus. Nabito works 24 hours a day, it idles 24 hours a day, surpassing the limits of functional categories and aesthetic and intellectual clichés within their projects. Regarding the diffusion of architecture today, there has been an open debate between Manuel Gausa and other architects of the same generation, characterized by numerous platforms founded or cofounded by Manuel himself. Not to mention them all, just think about the internationalization of Quaderns, the official journal of the Catalan College of Architects. During the years in which it was directed by Manuel, he was able to surround himself with an entourage of professionals that enhanced the possibility of the communication
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in architecture, that improved internationalization, and gave a comprehensive and critical view of the critical aspects of contemporary architecture and urbanism. The journal introduced a new and interesting emerging European reality with similar thoughts (a generation of ideas,) but with different specific and formal results. Actar Editorial from Barcelona to France via Archilab Metapolis UIC and IAAC (Istituto di Architettura Avanzata di Catalunya) are examples of starting points opened by Gausa for the diffusion of the architectural debate that often were unable to continue properly. Although the case of Actar Editorial is still an example of a crossdisciplinary editorial, or at least it was in the traditional way, today we no longer believe in the use of printed magazines to spread architectural thoughts. FL: I agree, nowadays many people use the Internet, omitting printed magazines; City Vision is a free press magazine instead. BF: Don’t misunderstand me; I’m not against printed magazines. I’m not a dogmatic person. But I think that the world of press is not sustainable, as it is directly linked with paper and ink industries. On my device I have the Alexandria library in five different languages, and I’m able to take it with me anywhere, and access it at any time. Some magazines can’t understand these changes and can’t take part in the new economy. But I think that this kind of change will be in effect soon. Reflecting on the cognitive surplus, the concentration of daily activities and the convergence of new media technologies with the old ones determines the ease of production but binds the work with the great personal pleasure of producing comfortably with our own tools. I recommend a book by Daniel Pink and Clay Shirky on the comparison between the revolution created by Internet in the United States and the one created by television. FL 03: It’s the same concept expressed by De Masi when he speaks about the creative idle… BF: Most importantly, time spent passively watching television is now activated by interacting with the network. People are producing concrete ideas about society, politics, technology and economics, which often lead to the production of high quality products that can be freely diffused over a network and can in turn affect the structure of real life. (Look at the social network; a multimillion-dollar business based on cognitive leisure activities, or, more recently, the tsunami generated in journalism by Wikileaks. There are countless examples…). Basically it’s taking advantage of idle time and transforming it into an activity but a pleasurable one that can take place in different spaces and that is not exclusively devoted to a single task. The planning standards of the 1900’s were based on 8 hours shifts: 8 hours for work, 8 for recreation and 8 for sleep. Time was divided into boxes, like space was in turn given a set square footage for each activity. The expansion of contemporary time