Massimo Carmassi

Biography

Massimo Carmassi graduated from the Faculty of Architecture in Florence in 1970. In 1974, he established the Project Office of the Commune of Pisa and directed it till 1990. From 1981 to 1985, he was the chairman of the Architectural Association in Pisa and its district. Carmassi is recipient of the Heinrich Tessenow gold medal awarded by the Heinrich-Tessenow-Gesellschaft e.V. (Alfred Toepfer Stiftung F.V.S.); he was appointed as a member of the class of Architecture in the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno of Florence and of the Accademia Nazionale di San Luca. He is a member of the Internationale Bauakademie Berlin and a Honorary Fellow of the American Institute of Architects. His work encompasses restoration, new building and urban design. Carmassi is Professor of Architectural and Urban Design in the Iuav University of Venice. He has been teaching Architectural Design in the Schools of Architecture of Ferrara, Genoa, Turin, Reggio Calabria, at Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio (Università della Svizzera Italiana), Hochschule der Kunst of Berlin and at Syracuse University in New York.

Design concept

The architecture of the past looks at us as the sum of many interventions realized by different generations of patrons, inhabitants and architects, being the result of the work of many unknown authors. For this reason it has a great value and a rare beauty that we can seldom catalogue as it is often due to chance or to the events. The task of our work is to preserve such richness and to restore it, not only for its documental value but also for its aestethic quality. On the contrary our new buildings aim at being in continuity with history, not for their stylistic features, but for the concept of their design and the syntax of their composition that are both dominated by the aspiration to a longue durée, admitting any change in the use to preserve the identità of architecture

Buildings, urban works and projects

Restoration works and projects