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MIRO is an architecture studio founded in Bologna, Italy in 2009.

The office operates mostly in residential and commercial interior design but since its birth brings on a continuous research in the architectural planning field, through competitions and large scale proposals (often mixing architecture and business projects).

The office’s operational field ranges over a wider area that includes object design, graphic art, garden planning and temporary settings. MIRO won several prizes and mentions in national and international competitions and in 2011 has been included by New Italian Blood in the Top 10 of the most promising under 35 architecture offices of the country.

Valentina Cicognani (Forlì, 1978) studied in Ferrara and Göteborg (Chalmers Tekniska Högskola). Graduated in 2004, she worked in Austria and Italy. She’s assistant professor at Architecture Faculty of Ferrara since 2006 and collaborator researcher at University of Bologna since 2010.

Giacomo Minelli (Bologna, 1983) Studied at University of Ferrara and at Universidad Catolica de Santiago (Chile). Graduated in 2008, he collaborates to the planning courses of Faculty of Architecture of Ferrara since 2010.

Riccardo Pedrazzoli (Bologna, 1978) Studied architecture in Italy (Ferrara) and Sweden (Chalmers Tekniska Högskola, Göteborg). After his degree he collaborated with offices in Italy and Austria. Since 2005 he’s contract professor in Ferrara (faculty of Architecture) and since 2010 in Trento (Faculty of civil engineering).

SKFDiamond in the shell of the pastReconstruction of the Berlin Castle as the new Humboldt Forum.Berlin (D)2008 (competition project)Project: Valentina Cicognani, Giacomo Minelli, Riccardo Pedrazzoli. with SKF and Frediani+Gasser architettura.

The old Castle of Berlin, after minor damages in the WWII, has been raised down by the Eastern German Government to be substituted by the House of the Republic. XXI century Berlin wants now the historical manor to be rebuilt, at least in its external appearance, to host the newborn Humboldtforum museum complex. The competition entry starts from the refusal to recreate the whole mass of the old Castle obtaining a fake of the original. Just the external walls are rebuilt as and where they were, Playing hence the role of a mere scenography. the new building is instead an independent and pure cubic volume hosting several museum and research institutions on seven levels facing on breathtaking inner vacuum spaces. Between the new building and its memorial skin, a botanical garden reminds the naturalistic research of Wilhelm Von Humboldt.

A garden to remember Competition for the renewal of the cemetery.Polesella (RO)2011 (first prize)Project: MIRO, Valentina Cicognani, Giacomo Minelli, Riccardo Pedrazzoli

Inside the old walls of Polesella cemetery, two thousands square meters of different and disordered burials are substituted by an archipelago of small square shaped buildings containing niches or urns shelves and disposed on a ordered grid replyable also in further expansions.The interstitial space becomes an articulated system of green courts where to stay, reflect, prey or meet up.The cemetery forgets the rhetoric of solemnity to interpret the need of meditation and intimacy of those who remember a lost beloved person.

Casa M Single family houseParco della Sila, Calabria2010 (suspended)Project: MIRO, Valentina Cicognani, Giacomo Minelli, Riccardo Pedrazzoli

A present from a father to the daughter: a vacation house on the mountains of her childhood. But the first sketch is obsolete when the foundations are set. A completely new object is studied into the boundaries of the originary project’s volume, with a strongly three-dimensional inner space and a radically essential external look.

Tower House Renewal of a residential tower.Treviso2011 (competition entry)Project: MIRO, Valentina Cicognani, Giacomo Minelli, Riccardo Pedrazzoli. Collaborator: Gianluca Muscas.

A residential tower in the hinterland of Treviso needs an aesthetic restyling and a possible use for the large circular roof of its commercial base. The new skin is a sequence of horizontal sripes of plastic fabric on metal structure protecting from wid and sun, shielding the remoulded terraces and projecting above the three branched plan.The big disc of the base covering, transformed in a green roof, is divided in gardens for the flats and common orchards

FBM award. First phaseUrban requalification project.Spoleto (PG)2011 (selected for the second phase)Project: MIRO, Valentina Cicognani, Giacomo Minelli, Riccardo Pedrazzoli. Collaborator: Gianluca Muscas.

An housing and commercial task in a narrow lot between the railway and the back courtyards of the existing buildings. The project exploits the sole contact points with the surrounding public space to grow into vertical buildings containing retail shops and offices and gives birth deep in the lot to a compact fabric of single family houses facing their patios toward south. An independent Siedlung insensitive to the polluting agents of the context and constructively interfaced with the urban scene.

CountersprawlProposals to redefine the border between city and the countryside.Bologna (Italia)2011 (Towards Ruralcity. Competition entry)Project: MIRO, Valentina Cicognani, Giacomo Minelli, Riccardo Pedrazzoli.

While the city keeps on biting the rural territory with its diffused espansions, in the outskirts large abandoned industrial or commercial areas are dying because nobody has the means to requalify them. Countersprawl is supposed to be a symmetrical reaction to urban sprawl. Waiting for their requalification, the large industrial areas are given back to the territory, demolishing them and restarting cultivating on them. The countryside gains back her lost territories. Brownfield reborn as greenfield.In the meantime the city don’t stop to expand, but she finally learns to do it on the axis of large scale public transportation instead than on the tentacles of private car circulation.

Per Filo e per SegnoRequalification of the waterfrontCala Gonone (NU)2011 (Competition_honorable mention)Project: MIRO, Valentina Cicognani, Giacomo Minelli, Riccardo Pedrazzoli. Collaborator: Gemma Zoppitelli

The waterfront of a village on the Sardinian coast needs a refurbishment taking care of the different summer and winter uses. The project transforms the soastal road in a one way woonerf, a unique surface texturized in local stone with the sardinian carpets pattern on which car and pedestrian traffic are coplanar. More than a boulevard a linear square, on which several lens shaped coverings land as protections to the external lounges of restaurants and bars. Light structures, wrapped with plastic fabric, acting as sun protection in the daytime and diffuse lighting system on the night.

Forma UrbisNew town centreKlaksvik, Faer Oer Islands2012 (competition entry)Project: MIRO, Valentina Cicognani, Giacomo Minelli, Riccardo Pedrazzoli. Collaborator Michele Filippini

The second largest town of Faer Oer Islands proclaim an idea competition for a new urban centre on which to identify itself. The concept imagine to settle on the pre-existing artificial embankement of the fjord a new citadel consisting of two polygon shaped concentric buildings that lifting up randomly generate the solid-vacuum system of a compact urban fabric. In its linear development the constructed mass contains retail shops, municipal offices and public offices such a amulti hall and a museum. A cold wind shielding fortress that hides a lively and warm living space for the community, a possible generative matrix for a future Klaksvik proportioned on man size.

Citadel of farewellMorgue and service buildingFerrara2012 (competition entry)Project: MIRO, Valentina Cicognani, Giacomo Minelli, Riccardo Pedrazzoli. Collaborator Mattia Mancarella

After the decentralization of Ferrara’s main hospital there’s a need for a detached unit for funerary services. In the competition entry the morgue is settled in a narrow stripe in the back of the lot hidden by a green wall, offices and services occupy the existing building, the ceremonial area instead give birth to a new architectural object, essential and solemn in which the burial chambers are served by a huge waiting room.The water, ancestral symbol of purification, is the attentive but omnipresent characterizing element of the architectural scenography. Two water pools at the feet of the external facades reflect the reverberation of the light on the walls and the ceilings of the inner room. The slow perpetuosus tremble of the waves diffuse its hypnotic quiet message.

Digging for IdentitiesNew city coreGjilan (Kosovo)2013 (Competition Entry-Europan)Project: MIRO, Valentina Cicognani, Giacomo Minelli, Riccardo Pedrazzoli. Landscape architecture: Laura Tandeddu.Collaborators: Pietro Cesari, Alessandro Cardellini, Alberto Zanelli, Milka Georgeva, Giulia Rossi.

The capital city of a rural province of newborn Kosovo needs a new cultural and administrative core, within a wider reconfiguration of its main boulevard.The Tito era axis has been reshaped in order to generate green urban squares to be used by the surrounding quarters. At its intersection with the small river rises the new citadel: the town hall, the cultural centre and an hotel with shopping area take shape as three big and compact masses corroded at the ground floor by the streetlife and on the top by the profile of the surrounding hill landscape. The broken shells reveal the different languages of the three separated inner micro-worlds.

Throughout an identityAustrian Pavillon Expo 2015Milan2013 (Competition Entry)Project: MIRO, Valentina Cicognani, Giacomo Minelli, Riccardo Pedrazzoli. Collaborator: Alice Lodi

The volume imposed by the masterplan have been splitted into 32 carved cross sections. Their sequence gives life to the dynamic inner space. The big opening in the main facade represents Austria itself, but section after section, ceiling and floor perpetuously evolve themselves, moulding a mazed visit path that flows through a diagram-styled scene of mountains, hills, lakes and flatlands, a transfigured representation of the nine Lander landscape.The service and welcoming spaces are upstairs, ‘hanged’ to the wooden bearing structure, and they see from above the exhibition hall through the wide lightwells.

1321SPBackyard mansionsHousing complex.London (UK)2013 (competition project)Project: MIRO, Valentina Cicognani, Giacomo Minelli, Riccardo Pedrazzoli.Collaborators: Elisabeth Schulz, Nicole Lichtenegger

In Morpeth Road there’s a long, curved block cut in thin slices by the lots of elegant row houses from the fifties. A Real Estate Company decided to build new single family houses in the irregular leftovers of the demolished garages.The concept aims to reach an high level of privacy and exclusivity despite of the narrow and irregular spaces: the lots, enclosed by high fence walls, become protective and green patios welcoming the dayzones on the ground floor. On the upper floors, the bedrooms open themselves towards south through the articulated cuttings of the vertical volumes.

1401XMA curiosity lighthouseRefurbishment of a service building as a new seat for Urban Center Ferrara and Ferrara architects chamber.Ferrara2014 (competition project)Project: MIRO, Valentina Cicognani, Giacomo Minelli, Riccardo Pedrazzoli.Collaborators: Elisabeth Schulz, Veronica Ninì Brugo, Giovanni Amadei.

A proto-modernist building in the former market area of the city of Ferrara will be converted into the new Urban Center and the new seat of the architect’s chamber. The main inherited problems are the absence of an elevator, the inadequate size of the inner staircase and the uncomfortable entrance. We interpreted this handicaps as an opportunity and, avoiding demolitions in the old block, we created a brand new stair and lift block aside acting as a translucent rear illuminated Landmark. The glazed volume connecting the old and new part is the new attractive entrance of the complex.The settings in the main hall is a huge map of the city on the floor, with mobile zoom-tables describing new projects and transformations in an immediate, touchable, interactive way.

1407MBWindows of the worldNew ethnographic mueseum in Budapest.Budapest (H)2014 (competition project)Project: MIRO, Valentina Cicognani, Giacomo Minelli, Riccardo Pedrazzoli.Collaborators: Elisabeth Schulz, Giovanni Amadei, Tommaso de Paoli.Intern students: Emanuel Falappa, Silvio Pennesi.

At the corner of the biggest urban park of the city, a new home is planned for the museum of the cultures of the world. Our proposal emphasised the corner position moulding the building as a curved triangle. From both sides of the urban crossing as well as from the park, the visitors have access to the main central hall digging the volume from ground floor to top. All the exhibition areas, the shops and the services are facing on the high void space through the wide terraces. While the introverted space offers itself as a square for the city, the external interface of the building is as solemn and mute as a monument. The function is revealed by the constellation of variously shaped windows from all over the world, revealing themselves behind the translucent skin.

1411CKdifferent point of viewcommercial and residential building in Katrineholm (SE)Katrineholm (SE)2014 (competiton project)

Project: MIRO, Valentina Cicognani, Giacomo Minelli, Riccardo Pedrazzoli, Linda IvarssonCollaborators: Giovanni Amadei.Intern students: Alexandra Andronachi, Andreea Carabus, Wioleta Mikołajek.