Interview with Messner Studio: A Contemporary Vision of Italian Architecture

What is your background?

The collective was founded in 2013 by David and Verena Messner, brother and sister. The studio is located at 1,200 m.a.s.l. near Bozen / Bolzano in Northern Italy inside our Father’s workshop.

The practice is working on a contemporary approach in many scales, ranging from housing and functional buildings to furniture-design up to landscape projects. The primary aim of developing user- and site-specific concepts is to think and build high quality architecture. A largely regional context defines the studio’s field of action characterizing the architects’ view on the delicate relationship of built and grown. The critical look at something given and the use of transdisciplinary strategies lead to a creative dialogue between architecture, landscape, art and design.

What are the qualities / weaknesses necessary for success in your profession as an architect ?

Our profession demands great effort and dedication, high professionalism and responsibility. We have to be sensitive about social needs and changes. Therefore it is essential to accumulate positive energies, to make them predominate and not to give up. Be ambitious and curious, be critical of yourselves, acquire solid working skills and get your workflow straight, admire others and look around you! Be awake, be special, be sensitive and passionate!

What makes Messner unique in the way it carries out its projects?

The mainly rural context defines our field of action, as well as a rich variety of buildings of different eras and various social environments, you can find everywhere in Italy. The delicate relationship of built and grown plays a fundamental role in approaching projects. Landscape in our vocabulary mostly is the main challenge as we have to deal with a complexity of themes around morphology, geology and increasingly more important the atmospheric influences. It is our duty to act responsibly and to respect the territory. We believe that we have to read the landscape wherein our building sites are located very carefully and look beyond the borders. Architecture cannot be separated from the topography.

Then the right atmosphere between the clients and us is very important. We try to find out about their visions of living, their daily needs, their ideas of space. We are interested in feeling emotions, in asking questions and calling into question. We want to create friction in order to trigger off something new. Building has to be a challenge for all involved parties so that something new can arise. We want our clients to understand that everyone has the right to feel free to break off if not feeling comfortable. Therefore everyone involved either clients and architects have to feel fine, respected and taken seriously. The relationship between the clients and us has to be solid, as we have to face important and personal decisions over months or years.

What's the Italian touch in your projects?

Getting started with our architecture office in the far north of Italy and furthermore coming from an Austrian university, we did not feel so much connected to the Italian architecture scene. But over the last years this changed fundamentally, also due to the opening of the local scene to other Italian regions. Participating in various activities we got to know a few young Italian architecture practices we had already been appreciating before. Italy has an immense pool of capacities and knowledge in the fields of arts, architecture, design, manufacturing and craftsmanship. We attach importance to having access to this rich pool you simply cannot help in being constantly inspired by.

Can you give us 3 projects that illustrate your know-how and specificity?

• The renovation of St. Joseph in the Woods is still a very important project for our practice. It was the last time we could work together with our father, an artist, in the redesign of the presbytery before he suddenly passed away.

• The first interior only project we did was the remake of Café Restaurant Zentral in our hometown. It taught us how to deal with an extremely short period for realization and how to manage more than 20 different companies and works of all kinds.

• Speaking about a recent project we can refer to RVTK - Renovation and extension of a residential building. It was really demanding as we had to deal with three involved parties of the same family under one roof. Furthermore the construction site was more distant than we were used to. The site management required a neat and precise preparation, although lots of changes were made at the moment.

Generally speaking, what sources of inspiration fuel your creativity?

All the things surrounding us, all the spaces wherein we move, affect our perception and sensation of the world and our presence in it. Our physical and digital environment is constantly facing us with ephemeral impressions. Filtering these is a real challenge. We accurately follow the development of contemporary architecture, all over the world and particularly in Italy. We are interested in art, design, literature, both contemporary and historic. There is no specific trends or movements we strictly follow, but there is a lot going on in the most diverse sectors. Never stop learning, being curious and ambitious in order to evolve tailor-made projects - that’s our motivation and inspiration.

What are your ambitions for the future? A dream project?

Building means responding to a spatial necessity. And there are plenty of ways to answer. With every new project we are interested in fresh approaches regarding the construction tasks, the mental challenges, the material implementation, the design processes, the social components. As we are surrounded by a rich fund of buildings the tendency towards refurbishment, redesign and conversion is remarkable. But being strictly tied to the past can prevent evolution. We think that it is necessary to understand the essence of certain already existing principles to develop them further, to adapt them and go beyond. The tools we are using nowadays to design have changed our approach to architecture as they aren’t the same anymore. In addition the processes of digitally controlled production to some extent make it possible to get rid of the limitations of traditional production, broadening thereby our horizon. Speaking for David we recently started a dream project: a gym. Unfortunately we could not follow it further than to the preliminary design. Besides that every project is a new challenge with its pleasant and fascinating sides.