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PG23 takes a hands-on approach to design through making and direct experimentation, as we produce work that spans the gulf between the speculative and the tangible, the represented and the real, the poetic and the practical. We champion innovative architectural strategies that boldly address the environmental challenges of our time.
This year, our ethos took us to challenge the linear nature of architectural production and the privileged status of the finished building. Inspired by the long-exposure photography of Michael Wesely, which captures the temporal interweaving of people, materials and environments, we explored architecture not as a fixed or autonomous entity, but as a continuous act of assembly – always in flux, always incomplete. This perspective dispelled the myth of the building as a static object, and instead invited a deeper inquiry into architecture’s capacity continuously to produce and occupy a multitude of worlds over time.
We advocated the perpetually incomplete, positioning architecture within a continuum of interwoven states – conceptual, material and temporal. Through this lens, we travelled across northern Italy, from Verona into the Dolomites, onward to Milan and Como, and finally to Turin. Along the way, we engaged with sublime alpine landscapes, post-industrial contexts and experimental architectures – both iconic and obscure. These encounters grounded our research in real-world complexities while fuelling ambitious and imaginative responses.
Our investigations raised critical and provocative questions of architectural identity, authenticity and legacy, as we developed new digital vernaculars for Longarone, explored the poetics of repair and reuse in Turin, and examined the role of projection and storytelling for prospecting alternative futures. We asked: How, where, when and with whom do we build? What ecologies do we participate in and assemble, and to what end?
This recalibrated approach led to the emergence of new architectural knowledge – tacit, embodied and technical, accrued through hands-on engagement with materials, tools and processes. By collaborating with people, places and agencies beyond the studio, we reimagined the fundamentals of doing, building and being in architecture.