Autor: Angelo Renna

Angelo Renna is an architect with a practice established in Amsterdam after having studied architecture in Florence and Porto. He has grown a particular interest in preserving and implementing natural elements in architecture. While constantly working on multiple collaborations, he leads his own practice in a dynamic and sustainable manner.

Working as a lone wolf

Like many other young architects at the beginning I was working for an architecture firm and besides that, I was working with friends and colleagues on competitions. Among many attempts, once we got lucky and we won the Europan with Luca and Davide. However, it wasn’t enough to start a full-time collaboration. I work as a lone wolf ;) and I prefer to find new collaborations every time in relation to the projects. It is a more dynamic and economically sustainable way of working.

Ladybugs delivered to the studio

For my latest project “lesser houses” I bought 25 ladybugs on Amazon…I did not know that you could actually buy insects online and receive them by post alive. I built with Francesco (a wildlife specialist) a terrarium; a mini garden in a glass box to monitor and to understand how the ladybugs behave, what they like to eat and make them try the houses I was designing.

Finding a balance between different jobs

Becoming an adult, I found a better balance between the different jobs and the private life. I work 4 days a week for a landscape practice in Amsterdam and on Fridays and sometimes weekends I can focus on my research and projects. In this way I can continue to improve my skills and experience and, besides, I have the time to work on my things.

Relating spatial articulation to life organisation

My studio space is a small room in the apartment where I live. I recently discovered that the building was designed by the famous Dutch architect Berlage and his assistant Jop van Epan in the beginning of the last century. It is a simple social housing block, but I find the organization of the living program in many small rooms extremely interesting. In a certain way, this structured articulation of the spaces relates to the way I organize my work and life.

Achieving the expectations

I have been interested in nature and landscape since I was studying architecture, so I have to say that I did not end up in something really different from my expectations.

Being a researcher and a designer at the same time is fundamental to me because it affects the way I see things, and as a consequence, the way I design.

I also don’t like to call myself a landscape-architect, because I am not. I am an architect with an interest in designing nature. I believe that architects in the near future will increasingly study the interactions among humans, plants, animals, and the environment; they will have to.

Upcoming projects

In the next few months, I would like to finish the two projects I’m working on for a long time: a research project about the zoo of the future (in collaboration with Thijs de Zeeuw) and the project of a small artificial island which it is able to collect microplastic in the Cetacean Sanctuary; the area with the highest biodiversity marine life in the Mediterranean sea but also with the highest level of concentration of plastic. Regarding the near future, I just started writing my second book “What is Nature?”, following my first publication “Monkey Factor”. Fingers crossed!