Paolo Desideri is a Roman architect, head of Studio ABDR Architetti Associati, and professor in the Department of Architectural Design and Urbanism at the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Pescara. He taught in many places: Berkeley, Stuttgart and Dessau. In parallel with his architectural practice and teaching, Desideri acts as an architecture critic, author of articles and books on architecture, and also directs three architecture journals.
For his speech, Paolo Desideri chose projects in which tradition and innovation coexist. He is deeply convinced that they do not conflict with each other, these are two sides of the same coin. If we try to preserve the city without touching anything, it will turn into a museum, into a parody of itself. An example is Venice, a city filled with tourists from all over the world. The architect does not see the difference between Venice, Disneyland and Las Vegas.
Paolo Desideri works in Rome, a city with almost three thousand years of history and layers of different eras, so the theme of the interweaving of traditions and architectural aesthetics of today is especially close to him.
Thus, Desideri created a project to expand the Exhibition Palace in Rome. The new part is a completely glass greenhouse hanging over the body of the old palace building. In this project, a structure is used on which a glass parallelepiped is suspended, which makes it light and transparent. And at night, when the light inside the glass volume is turned on, it becomes a huge city-scale lamp.
Desideri used the suspension technology in another Roman building - a new railway station for high-speed trains. Here, the elevation above the ground performs a more practical function - damping vibration from the movement of trains. In total, it is planned to build 25 railway tracks, which will be covered from above by a huge building resembling a skyscraper laid on its side.
The building of the concert hall in Florence is one of the latest projects of the workshop of Paolo Desideri. Its façade consists of wavy stone ribbons that are woven into each other and create a textured façade for an absolutely geometric volume. Since the building is supposed to function like a concert hall, the acoustics in it must be perfect. Desideri used the so-called Munich acoustic system, which also operates at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow.
During his speech, Paolo Desideri repeatedly repeated that the city must develop, it cannot be mothballed, otherwise it will turn into a museum. But when asked from the audience how he relates to the fact that about four hundred architectural monuments have been destroyed in Moscow in recent years, he replied that in this case, architects must fight the authorities.
