The architecture is a collective narrative: the interview with Paolo Brescia of the OBR studio

OBR (Open Building Research) is a group founded in 2000 when architects Paolo Brescia and Tommaso Principi, both working at Renzo Piano's studio, created a network with other colleagues, generating an exchange of ideas between Genoa, London, New York, and Mumbai. With the addition of Andrea Casetto as a new partner, the studio has now solidified into a team of forty architects based in Milan’s Brera district.
OBR's work intertwines architectural design with themes deeply connected to a sense of community, the expression of individual identities, and the relationships between people and the environment, constructing a collective narrative that brings together different generations and cultures.
Among all the projects, two emblematic examples are the Pythagoras Museum in Crotone, which celebrates the fusion of history and contemporaneity, and the residential complex of Milanofiori, where the search for a balance between opposites—public and private, natural and artificial, interior and exterior—creates spaces in constant evolution, a "relational" architecture that interacts with its inhabitants through the dynamic exchanges between humans and the environment.
OBR’s approach goes beyond new design. The work of restoring and enhancing existing heritage, as demonstrated in the Palazzo dell’Arte of the Triennale in Milan or the Mitoraj Museum in Pietrasanta, is another distinctive aspect. Among OBR’s many ongoing projects are the Innovation Hub within MIND in the Expo 2015 area and Casa BFF on Viale Scarampo in Milan, while another much-anticipated project, the Bassi Business Park, located between Porta Nuova and Scalo Farini in Milan, is nearing completion.


Casa BFF. Photo courtesy of OBR

Let’s start with the Bassi Business Park, a project that revitalizes a series of buildings from the 1970s, giving the city a new business hub. How is it structured?

The Bassi Business Park is an urban project in one of the most sensitive and transforming areas of Milan, located in the Isola district, between Porta Nuova, Porta Garibaldi, and Scalo Farini. The idea is to rethink several buildings constructed in the 1970s, partly preserving their structure, while reinterpreting their relationship with the surrounding context. Instead of demolishing and rebuilding, we chose to build upon what already exists, enhancing the heritage through contemporary “insertions” that create new connections between the existing parts. This approach redefines the relationship between the new and the pre-existing, conceiving the whole as not just a sum of distinct elements, but as a unified organism where expressive logic and constructive logic coincide. By working with what is already built, we’ve developed an idea of architecture that feels "already there": combining the dual temporal dimensions of the “already” and the “before,” we aim for architecture that belongs to its time but is perceived as if it has always been there. It’s a sort of oxymoron that overlays the present with the past and the future, merging memory and vision.


Bassi Business Park. Photo courtesy of Michele Nastasi

The metallic brise soleil framing the facade play an important role not only from an aesthetic point of view but also in managing sunlight and the building’s energy efficiency. What was the design process behind the development of the facade?

From the very beginning, we were convinced that this project should not indulge in ostentatious solutions, but instead be significant for its ability to “create a city.” In this case, it meant being part of a vibrant and lived-in urban context, like the Isola district. For this reason, we imagined an architecture that is reflective during the day and shifting at night. The large glass surfaces of the façades are characterized by a brise-soleil system that draws from the color range of the surrounding context, combining urban qualities with energy-environmental strategies.

Milan will increasingly become a polycentric city: it seems like an open-air construction site, and urban regeneration is a key theme of contemporary times. How do you see the future Milan?

Perhaps we should start with a question: what have the interventions of the past twenty years produced in Milan? Certainly, a tendency toward vertical development. But how has Milan, the city of the permanence of street patterns, alignments, compact with its "low-rise buildings," courtyards, and internal gardens, reacted? It’s true that many of these interventions—think of Porta Nuova and Garibaldi Repubblica—have now entered the urban collective imagination as new centralities (especially for tourists and foreigners), but at what cost? Some argue that tall buildings, by nature, elevating themselves from the urban fabric, do not communicate with their context. In fact, by emerging 360°, they no longer have a front, back, or side, effectively nullifying the hierarchy between building typology and the city.
But there’s another thing that I believe is gaining ground in Milan, something that aims to overcome the “atypical” individualism of these new vertical developments: it is the rediscovery of public space, the thirst for urbanity, the hunger for squares. This consideration brings to mind Albert Hirschman’s antinomy in Private Interest and Public Action, where human history is seen as a continuous oscillation between the desire for individual satisfaction and the opposite desire for collective satisfaction, for sharing. Toward this rediscovery of public space is the project we are completing on Viale Scarampo for Casa BFF, which actually reverses the relationship between figure and background, where the figure in front is the space returned to the public domain, and the background behind is the building. This desire to "create a city," I believe, represents Milan's great opportunity.

Casa BFF. Photo courtesy of Nicola Colella

Urban regeneration is not just about buildings, but also about people and communities. How do your projects contribute to creating spaces that not only improve the environment but also promote social cohesion and the well-being of people?

The world continues to change before our eyes, as we begin to see it more clearly. It is a world made of interactions, not things. We often realize that our image of the world is partial, parochial, inadequate. After all, we cannot answer new questions with old answers. We need new eyes to see the world, especially the one that is to come. It is reductive to think of space as something that "contains" and time as something "during which it happens." We believe more in processes made of relationships. Architecture is increasingly interconnected with other worlds and disciplines. Today, the urgency is to address the challenges of contemporaneity, from climate change to civil, political, and social regressions.
What we are trying to do is unite forces with some maître à penser who have inspired us over time, with whom we can initiate a multi-voiced dialogue and promote a broader reflection on contemporary living in light of multiple perspectives—from the arts to science, from landscape to future mobility. For example, with Roni Horn, we are exploring the theme of multiple identities within the community; with Michel Desvigne, public space as a common good; with Giovanna Borasi, cultural spaces as participatory places; with George Amar, the relationship between globality and local specificity. With them, we have formed a sort of "imaginary team" for an ideal but not utopian project, conceived as a common task—not so much the goal or the result, but a collective, evolving, cooperative process.

Encouraging social housing, repurposing public assets while pushing for private involvement, addressing the issue of suburbs and public space: these are just some aspects of our present. In your work, how do you approach the theme of urban resilience, especially in an era where climate and environmental challenges are becoming increasingly urgent?

By practicing architecture, we hope for projects that, although initiated by private entities, give something back to the public domain, seeking greater urbanity and social quality. We believe that our responsibility as architects is to contribute to the emergence of a new development model starting from the "urban edge," understood in the classical sense of limes, meaning the beginning—and not the end—of the city, creating civic spaces that align with the new expectations of an ever-evolving urban community. After all, it is the way we live that should determine how we dwell, not the other way around. If you listen to the place and the community that inhabits it, you often realize that everything is already there, that you get more with less, subtracting rather than adding, which doesn’t mean minimalism, but eliminating the "excess" that prevents what is from being, and what is not yet—or is no longer—what it should be.
Human action—and thus building—has a gigantic impact on our planet. The issue is how to move from a reductionist view that simply places man at the center, to a holistic view that centers our relationship with the environment. We need to rethink our approach to the world, no longer adapting the environment to us, but adapting ourselves to the environment.
As architects, we would like to take up Gustav Metzger’s call to fight for the safeguarding of the planet and future generations. We should pause and reflect on our role as architects, which is not to add something to the world of objects, but to "do fewer things," less construction, more architecture. I believe this is our moral duty. "We have no choice but to follow the path of ethics," Metzger said. For this reason, when we finish a project, I try to say, "We couldn’t have done any less."


Lehariya Jaipur. Photo courtesy of OBR

What does it mean for you to design architecture that evolves with its inhabitants?

It means recognizing that reality is a game of mirrors, a continuous and mutual interaction of actions and reactions. Consequently, architecture is "relational," made of relationships rather than objects. This is why we like to imagine it as an organism that acts and reacts with reality, interacting with its inhabitants through the dynamic exchanges between people and the environment, expressing what is constantly changing, like an open system that works on time, even before space, welcoming future changes and adapting to the evolving desires of those who inhabit it.
But let’s remember that in the architecture we design, we are "there" too—subjects and authors of our ways of living, nodes in an infinite network of relationships in perpetual evolution.
When you talk about architecture, you’re obviously not just talking about buildings, but about the lives of the people who inhabit them. Therefore, the real question is: what power does architecture have in contributing to the lives of the people who inhabit it? That's why our idea of architecture is fundamentally a relationship between.

What are you currently working on?

In Genoa, we are working on Casa Vela, the most prominent public building facing the sea within Renzo Piano’s master plan for the Levante Waterfront. The goal is to create a meaningful relationship with the sea, starting from the awareness that through the sea, all things are intimately connected. In Jaipur, Rajasthan, we are completing the Lehariya cluster, a real estate project that promotes social sustainability by involving the local community in the process, not only in construction but also in the ideation, from the small scale of craftsmanship to the urban scale of architecture.
In Milan, the Casa BFF Museum will soon open, hosting the contemporary art collection of the bank. It will be an art space open to the city, in continuity with the new public square returned to the public domain. Also in Milan, in the Expo area, we are about to build the Innovation Hub for Lendlease, which will be the manifesto of MIND’s values, combining innovation and a sense of community.
In Pietrasanta, we are completing the Mitoraj Museum, repurposing an old covered market structure and creating a new square open to the city, allowing the museum to extend beyond itself. In Prato, we are developing the project for the Central Park, which, in addition to the urban park designed by Michel Desvigne, includes a pavilion in synergy with the cultural activities of the city.
These are very different projects, but they all share the same "social" approach, appealing to the creation of new models of public space that are accessible and open to everyone, where people can enjoy being together and reconnecting, celebrating a renewed urbanity ritual by bringing together all the particularities we are and in which we are so radically inscribed.


Casa Vela. Photo courtesy of OBR