Giancarlo Mazzanti: From the Factory to the Toy

From an industrial language of architecture defined by the new ways of production to the vindication of ludic as a catalyzer of social dynamics in the contemporary architecture. Concepts like EFFICIENCE AND ROUTINE have established an architecture determined by CONTROL, where the space turns to be a container of defined habits, leaving aside the possibility to change and be reinvented for the unexpected.

What would happen if the design is thought as an ambience catalyzer where the architecture learns to be an event, the architect learns to communicate, the inhabitant learns to have control and new ways of inhabiting are built?

The debate for diversity and multiplicity rises nowadays calling for the need of opportunities that will allow the transgression of the imposed limits, breaking the rigid rules assigned to the space. The changing and unstable contemporary world has brought the toy/game/ludic as a tool that can concede people the control of the space. This tool serves as a trigger for new behaviors and situations that are new, unexpected, abnormal… with the power of causing new cultural, economic and political answers when it produces social transformations.

Giancarlo Mazzanti (1963, Barranquilla, Colombia) is an architect graduated from the Javeriana University, Bogotá - Colombia (1987) with a postgraduate degree in Architecture History and theory, and Industrial Design from the University of Florence. Italy (1991).

He has been teacher in several Colombian universities, and has taught at some of the most prestigeous American universities such as Princeton University in 2012, Harvard Graduate School of Design in 2014 and University of Pennsylvania in 2016. He has been invited to lecture at Pratt, Yale, Berkeley, University of Valencia, Monterrey, Buenos Aires, Catolica del Peru, MIT, Tulane and Strelka, among others.

Amongst some of his most relevant projects are the Convention Center, Biblioteca España, the Southamerican Games Coliseums in Medellín, Colombia, the Tercer Milenio Park, El Porvenir Kindergarten in Bogota, Timayu Kindergarten in Santa Marta and most recently Pies Descalzos School in Cartagena and Marinilla Educational Park. He has been the distinguished winner of the XX Colombian Architecture Biennial in the category of public space in 2006, the Ibero-American Biennial in the category of Best Architectonic Work in 2008 (Lisbon, Portugal). Winner of the Panamerican Architecture Biennial in the category of Architectonic Design in 2008 (Quito, Ecuador), the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture (Paris, France ) in 2010. His work is in the permanent collection of the MoMA (New York), Museum Georges Pompidou (Paris) and CMOA (Pittsburgh).