Joseph di Pasquale opens the doors of his Milanese studio to us on a January afternoon, for a conversation between architecture and cinema, urban planning and planning, a function of design, creation and development of new proximity spaces. We have been certain for a year now that the world will never be the same again. What the pandemic has highlighted is that public and private spaces will be increasingly questioned. And this opportunity was welcomed by the design world as an opportunity to create new connections and new social spaces.
Joseph di Pasquale earned his PhD some time after the Degree in Architecture: what was the drive to resume doing research in the academic as well as professional fields? Your passion for cinema has led you to be the protagonist in front of and behind the cinema: is it a cinema that is functional to the architectural project?
Let's start with the doctorate. Five years ago, after an intense period of professional activity between Italy and China, I realized that I needed to stop. This "intercontinental" mode had caused me a deep sense of disorientation from globalization. I closed all my studies in China, keeping only representatives, and after completing some construction sites I chose to reset by enrolling in the PhD School of the Politecnico di Milano. And I asked myself this question: "Who does the architect work for today?" I needed to rethink space. In the case of the Chinese market, rendering is a formidable design weapon because it allows private individuals to obtain concessions for the use of land for speculative and commercial purposes. In China, in Guanghzou, I created the Jade Circle, a landmark building conceived as a native Chinese building with the pretense of not falling into the stereotype of the western skyscraper. Its completely closed and defined, iconic architectural form approaches the oriental way of perceiving reality. An urban logo that functions as a reference in the panorama of the city exactly as ideograms are used. To answer the other question, architecture and cinema have many points in common because architect and director are script creators and developers. I think of my profession as a screenplay for spaces. The fabric of the city does not need a dress but a script: it is necessary to understand which stories unfold in "this or that space". As a director on the set and as a designer, I believe there is a common language. People enter and leave the stage, move in a certain way, create spaces. With the Chorus Life project in Bergamo, I dealt with the digital interface of space. By participating in a small open talk between professionals, we asked ourselves what public space is and how it can no longer be thought of without connection to the “immaterial” space.
