From the “Preface”
In the course of the by now many long years of my career, I have always considered a close relationship between architecture – including contemporary architecture – and craftsmanship to be a sine qua non of my professional activity. It’s a relationship that is necessarily construed as the use of traditional techniques and/or materials – although the care paid to detail in every one of my creations naturally calls for significant skills of craftsmanship on the part of the workforce – but because every project, despite sometimes sharing some common elements, is unique in its complexity and has profoundly different roots, just like the lives of the people who are destined to experience it.
This makes it essential to every project to establish a constant, extensive dialogue between the architect and the client, based on a constructive and often confidential narrative, so that as ideas are passed back and forth and developed on site, benefitting from a wealth of tried-and-tested experience, we find it possible to cater for the desires and expectations of even the most demanding of clients.
The quest for harmony between the different parties, the successful balancing act that bestows unity on differences and enables both the whole and the details to be understood simultaneously: adapting this procedure to every situation, diversifying it to suit different contexts and the requirements of different clients, has always been a priority throughout my professional career.
Vincenzo Pavia