What was the most difficult issue about working within this building type or the most unexpected challenge that may have influenced new thought in your project?

Matching the Chinese globalized environment with the philosophy of our design strongly oriented on representing the Italian lifestyle and high quality standards. Two different approaches that hardly go together nowadays, as global and local.
Did this project expand or evolve your role as an architect in any way? In general, do you feel that the role of the architect is changing on current projects?

We always believe the Architect has to be the Orchestra Director of the construction and in the design phase this has to be forecasted in order to not let any other person involved taking the strategic decisions. Of course our role as architect evolve everytime we work on a project. It is a growth experience. As far as you become aware of how much an architect can be helpful you can conquer such huge space to run your projects. And client need this from you.
How is your building possible today in a way that it may not have been before and how have trends in technology and society inspired new thought and solutions?

Technology is not part of our problem. We could have built with bricks or titanium.The project would have been the same. Society is much more important. We like thinking we design to make people’s life better and more pleasant. The title of the Expo was all about that. Unfortunately , as everybody knows, society progress slowly and Architecture is just a way to cover billionaire real estate operations with cool expensive hi tech skins. All our projects come from this sad thought. After all we consider solutions that can be helpful in a way to make stuff simple. In this we are similar to the engineers that worked centuries ago without sophisticated technologies we got today. Technology should not distract the professional by more important troubles.
In the context of this project, how is your office and design process being influenced by current trends in academic curricula and incoming young architects? In turn, how are current projects and processes guiding the ongoing reformulation and development of academic curricula?

We are the young architects. We are not particularly interested in academic curricula. We have a practical approach completely free from academic and trends. We are not afraid of ever being out of date as the average age of our staff is 27.

The best architects are free-stylers creators and forecasters. Academy can just slow down such profile. Also trends act as academic ideologies nowadays. If an architecture is considered trendy then cannot be a nice architecture. What about the day after? In Rome, where our office is based we live in four hundred years buildings and spend our free time in wonderful plazas planned several eras ago. We always keep it in mind.