Interview with Marilena Magalotti, Piera Patera, Gianluigi Mutti (m&a).

"… by and large, it all started because clients were asking us for square metres rather than projects. "

Milan, 25th March 2007.

Seems interesting…
How does the passage from architect-designer to architect-entrepreneur happen?
PP. I’ll answer for myself as an architect, as a person who is not involved in real estate transactions, which gave me total liberty to concentrate on the project. It is a condition and it doesn’t add any problem to the fact of having a firm, apart from those linked to management and organisation.
I love the idea of not having any kind of bind with the client.

MM. Sure, but one can also lose focus on the objective, and in the same way one can follow it to the end or lose control. Let’s say it’s a pleasant condition but it isn’t easy...

As far as the architecture part is concerned, it seems to me that your idea was to move on one part of the building at a time. Was there a strong idea, a concept at the base for a progressive construction…
Can you tell us how the architectural project developed?
MM. Yes, at the beginning there was a strong idea, which was sketched on the cadastral plan and that in fact became the project. We started from a rather simple concept: cut the factory in pieces to make it usable compared to what it should have been.

Did you already know who the acquirers would be or were you groping in the dark as far as clients were concerned?
PP.At first we didn’t really know who was supposed to move in, so the project was based also on trying to imagine the profile of our clients. Therefore, on the one hand there was a research of the social mix we wanted to gather in this new compound, and on the other we wanted to look for special counterparts, and we did, as soon as the people from Abitare, the De Carlo art gallery came along...

Interesting. How did things work out with these “special” characters you mentioned: Abitare, the De Carlo art gallery? How did it all work out? When did they arrive?
Gianluigi Mutti. At a certain point Abitare decided to buy a part of the compound, then little by little the others arrived. Flavio Albanese we already knew. Flavio even took part in the general project. We have worked a lot together. And then, the Scuola Politecnica and the others came…

PP. Abitare and De Carlo have been the most important collaborators in the comprehensive project.
Not only financially but also in helping us to define an identity for m&a (mutti&architetti).

In what way?
PP. For a newly born firm such as m&a was then, it really meant something to design the De Carlo art gallery, and its interiors …

In percentage, how many lofts and how much space is there for the tertiary?
MM. A fifty-fifty ratio. Many decided, in spite of rules and regulations, to live and work here, but there are also those who had children and sent them to school in this district, moving from the city centre to the outskirts...

Is this how you wanted via Ventura to become when you first started working on it?
MM. It came about step by step, a bit at a time, so personally, I had no vision of the outcome. It was a constantly evolving work… Perhaps Giangi had a vision of it... More than a vision, I would rather say there was a necessity to do it.

GM.Well… by and large, it all happened because clients were asking for square metres rather than projects. This request pin points today’s building sector’s issue…

What do you mean?
GM. It’s simple: we live in a world where architects are not considered capable of making projects. In the meanwhile (back then) there was someone who did trust architects but failed to establish a relationship with the real estate market. We knew what people were looking for – moreover it is something many still don’t know how or cannot individuate – and just continued on that track.

Is it still the “time when we could imagine what people wanted in terms of symbolic image inventory and self realisation and to which we attempted to give a solution” or has that time come to pass?
GM. We still have that same necessity and that surge will have long term consequences. Obviously, we in the know notice and are aware of these things. And then, as you know, who is closer to us is often affected by it. Still, I think this surge will last a long time, and it will mince up the Salone del Mobile and all those obsolete things coming with it. If you look at what is happening in Holland, France, Germany, Berlin, Bruxelles, Rotterdam, we are still behind, this made in Italy fucks us up; think about Shanghai, and south-east Asia and what happens in the rest of the world.

From the outside it really seems to be a success…
GM. Both the trade and design operations have been more successful than expected. The comprehensive thing is very strong, successful, perhaps with a few patches here and there, but on the whole we are very satisfied.

Any regrets concerning the design?
MM. To be honest we weren’t equipped to do as much, so, as much as everything worked as we wanted it to, we still had to fill gaps here and there. But everything worked out in the end, because people first bought in a preconstruction phase and then the finished project, because they knew what they were buying. And in the end the result was to their satisfaction.

So in hindsight we can say that this process, which has started from the square metres onto which only afterwards the project was superimposed, has proved to be a very wise and clever way to go.
From what you say, it seems to me that these clients of yours were not so much interested in having light coming in from the east or double height, as in the amount of square metres. Is that so?
GM. No, it wasn’t a matter of square metres or a quality/price ratio. It was more related to the necessity of moving to a place which would respond to status and psychological needs.

Telle us more about this aspect, which seems to be very interesting …
GM. BIt’s easy, really.
You have a group of people who cannot afford the equivalent thing in town and who don’t mind living in the outskirts. The kind of people who have clearly understood that what Milan has to offer isn’t good enough.

Right, but you aren’t the first omes to have worked on lofts in Milan.
GM. Yes, but it we worked in different conditions. I mean, even the lofts in via Savona were the right solution; but in that case, all they did was to sell and divide spaces which were already very nice, without any connective project. Here, we had a project, right or wrong as it may have been, we starter off from a design. It was a project that entailed chisel-work by the centimetre.

We are steering to another interesting topic, here. From an architectural point of view this work has entailed a lot of research. As regards to materials and solutions you opted on … Can you tell us about the relationship between the real estate project (and its restrictions) and this more “experimental” side?
GM. If there hadn’t been a real estate operation, we could never have paid the firm for the research we have done. The same goes for via Cascia, the project we have just finished in the ex-Gio’ Style area.

So, research is paid with the profits made by real estate operations?
PP. Yes, in broad terms it is so and it couldn’t be any different.
In fact, I don’t think we could ever have moved from this track, because in any other professional job there are no ways to pay for research. It is impossible to keep the firm and the people who work for it in an upstanding way, by consultancy services only. Therefore it’s a choice we are compelled to make…

GM. To make it more clear: Faema (ex-Faema is an area on which the via Ventura compound was built) was unsold for 12 years and was at a third of the price we bought it for.

So, did you buy it before making the project?
GM. No, we didn’t buy it: they gave it to us to design and sell. We had two years time to pay for it.

And in financial terms? How much did it cost to buy before the site started? And after the big names had bought? And what is someone bought now?
GM. Basically everyone bought at an equivalent of 700 Euros, between 2000/2002.
To be precise, 700 euros was the square metre building-shell price, which became 900 Euros including the works. Then when we sold everything, in no time, a year and a half, those who resold their properties even non finished sold at four times the price. In the end, apart from the office building, everyone bought the finished property at a 1000 Euros. A price that now is hugely worth more.

Were you already called m&a at the time?
MM. Absolutely not. We didn’t even have a physical space. Just think that because we had to have a space where to work, we moved in the ex factory’s keeper’s house, we installed there and placed a few working desks. In short we invented ourselves a studio and we got down to work.

A rather informal start…
PP. Totally, mutti&architetti was founded that way in 2001. We improvised an opening party, there were six of us: six architects plus Giangi (Mutti), and then we started working on the project. Marilena (Magalotti) and myself (Piera Patera) became associates after a year and a half and in 2002, m&a took on its current structure.

So there’s three partners?
MM. Now, there’s three of us. And then there is a number of collaborators changing in time. The idea is, now that we feel prepared for it, is that of having junior partners, or rather to open the doors to those who share our vision or, even better, have something to add.

Tell us some more about how the firm’ s structure: how many people work in it, how it is organised and so on?
PP. It is such a complex group, we can’t really talk about a structure.
Our collaborators and ourselves are here; then there’s a micro network of technicians who move around from one building site to the other, deal with finance and marketing. The new architects at first find it difficult to understand the how the firm works or who all these people coming and going from the studio are. In a project meeting, at the same table sit the client, the developer and the graphic designer al tuned in and working with the same strength.

Right. Going back to via Ventura. Do you think the same operation could still work?
GM. Yes, it could. For example there’s this factory we want to refurbish and makeover, a project for young people who work in the art field, in Sesto San Giovanni, a fantastic place.

PP. For us this project has a cultural value. For us and all those who are going to move there. This time we are going to select the clients.

GM. For this place, we are thinking about young artists, who don’t have a permanent income, or young curators and then there will be diversified spaces, art galleries…

MM.This time the project will focus more on the outside rather than the interiors and on specific areas as the water tower. From this point of view the value is not in the project itself, yet in what will come out of it afterwards...

In other words?
PP. We aim at doing different things, and in this case we have this water tower which we want to makeover in a recording studio, and we like to imagine the whole place lived and used by our friends.

GM. This is an operation which does not involve speculation – or rather, let’s say that the speculation is very little – the profits have to pay for the firm, research and project. At the same time, though, space is given to a lot of the people we know who are in need of space to work. People who will get on very well together and that (not just a detail) will find themselves the owners of spaces the can resell.

How much of this story (stories) is related to Milan as a city? Could these operations be possible in other Italian places or countries abroad? Or certain dynamics are proper of Milan?
GM. In my view, it is just a question of time. If we had been in Antwerp we would have done these things 10 years earlier, in Milan we did them in 2000. Now everybody is looking for factories to convert into lofts in Milan, they are even constructing new loft buildings.

And how will via Ventura be in ten years time? Will there still be this same energy?
PP. In ten years time there will still be Catellani & Smith’s lamps on the roof, but bigger and stranger, but to me, yes, there will still be a mark.... I don’t know… Let’s hope that by then it will be at last outsmarted by other projects, and vibes, sprouting all over the city.