Elisa Pardini Hall Architecture DSM interview – Elisa was Born in Lucca, Italy. She, before the age of 40, created a beautiful architecture studio, participates in competitions, and prefers romantic projects with an Italian-English taste. Combining classic and modern with charm and simplicity. HOW TO REQUIRE AN INTERVIEW
Hi Elisa, I welcome you, even if, from a distance due to Covid-19, as you well know there are different technical difficulties. First of all, I hope to find you well. – Pardini Hall Architecture, Lucca
Pardini Hall Architecture, Lucca
Marlim: Elisa please, Talk a bit of yourself. Your studies, what’s your best project, what is your sector specifically between art, urban planning, architecture, interior design or other…:
Elisa: I attended Liceo Classico in high school, focusing on the humanistic field. I really enjoyed studying human beings from so many points of view. Then was Architecture
Elisa Pardini DSM interview. The co-founder at Pardini Hall Architecture a romantic project with an Italian-English taste.
Marlim: When did you start thinking about Architecture or any way your job?
Elisa: Growing up, to be honest Architecture wasn’t in my mind. I always wanted to study animals during my childhood and teenagerhood. As I really love animals and nature. So I felt it was the natural way for me to evolve. Specifically, I was intrigued by what at the time was ethology. Growing in the countryside allows me to spend a lot of my time with nature and observe it. I wanted to live in nature and preserve it, and share it with people around me (I spent a lot of time as an activist at WWF!!)
But I had a strong component of creativity in me that I had difficulties expressing. So my studies in high school focused on the humanistic field, and I realized how much I enjoyed studying human beings and society from so many different points of view (Liceo Classico) classic studies.
Architecture, felt like a common ground between keep studying society – as it is a reflection of society, from technological evolution, material inventions to common emotions and feelings and especially where do we want to go as a society – and express the creativity inside me.
This is how I choose it, thinking it was a great university. And it was. So is the job. It can always be very stimulating. I like to keep thinking about where architecture is going and what is representing, on top of doing also the profession.
Pardini Hall Architecture, Lucca
Elisa Pardini DSM interview. The co-founder at Pardini Hall Architecture a romantic project with an Italian-English taste. Lucca
Marlim: You said: “We feel we can impact people’s perception of value and behavior, promote a new design approach that reflects the state and values of the society we want to create for our sustainable future, this is how we choose our clientele.” So you choose your clients or them choose you? Of course, we’re joking, the true question is: Are you trying to keep projects you would love to do with passion and not because we need to do? Right?
Elisa: Yes, we accept only the projects that we feel enthusiastic about and we generally have a really open conversation with our potential clients, on how we work and what we do. To make them understand if we are the right fit. Generally, it is a natural process, we can’t click with everybody. Becoming someone architect is becoming a big part of their life, for a period, so we need to be good for each other. Plus time Is limited and we follow each project directly so there is only a certain amount we can do. We work more like artisan and not like a chain. So we got to have a limited amount of clients each time. READ SOMETHING ABOUT HERAULT ARNOD ARCHITECTS
Marlim: Your office is Focusing on the successful combination of architecture, ecological design, the classicism of Italians, and less construction, right? The office provides full architectural, master planning, urban design, and interior design services, too? is it heavy? How many people work with you?
Elisa: We are two directors, and two people working for us. Also, have freelance people helping from time to time depending on the workload. We do focus on architecture with both a British and Italian experience. Our philosophy try to embrace the style and construction method from both countries, applying Italian classicism with British modernism (and brutalism if the occasion arises). Sustainability is really important for us – from my love for nature – and it is a continuous work in progress as we really are now at a moment where we need to restart from the basis to understand how to impact as minimum as possible onto our planet in our field.
Marlim: This is something asked to me, from a student at a conference in Shanghai: “Won’t clients just ruin my brilliant designs?” I just said that clients just won’t spend their money in the right way they think. Sometimes they are in wrong thinking, anyway, you have 2 ways |…|. Which road would you take?
Elisa: Well, I see the relation with clients like an alchemic process. We are fusing two visions in one, and the product is going to be each time different for that. Sometimes there are clients that don’t want to add much to the mix, others that they want to add instead a lot in it.
The reality is that the mind always needs to be challenged to create a project because you got to have some limits/problems somewhere to fight and create the response. But this is why again you need to have similar sensibilities with your client to have this as a beneficial process.
Marlim: I fully agree!
Elisa: Last, but not least, we have to remember that we build ultimately for clients. Their needs should be mixed inside the design in order to avoid creating spaces that are not right for them (from all points of view).
Elisa Pardini DSM interview. The co-founder at Pardini Hall Architecture a romantic project with an Italian-English taste.
Marlim: If I’m not mistaken, you participated in awards with Design Studio Mag at the beginning of the year, for us, it was an immense work between contracts, photos publication, and numbers, how was it for you? how did it go?
Elisa: It went well! it was very exciting. We qualified as interior top 5, and you picked the mill project for the news about those interviews! This last especially made me feel very proud!
Marlim: compliments!
Marlim: Let’s talk about you, say something you didn’t before, something you want.
Elisa: This is a difficult one, you see, I need some boundaries to reply!! I can tell you I am a pretty optimistic person. like life. like to see the silver lining and do things. I like to work.
Marlim: When did you start your company, Elisa?
Elisa: I started on my own in 2008, I was called ELIPS DESIGN at the time. Then in 2013, Robert joined and we rebranded to reflect that.
Marlim: How did you do? did you already have the possibility to do it? did you have to ask for help? how was it?
Elisa: I think I am a bit of a tractor. So I went through uni studying a lot. (I also had a lot of fun eh). And then decided I wanted to experience in some important offices. I felt it was better to do so than a PHD.
So I sent my portfolio, nicely done, in a few places, and that is where it all started. At Fuksas. Then when I felt the experience was over there. I sent again to a lot of other places and after a few interviews decided on Foster. Think about me: have good willpower, so I see where I want to go and do it. I keep repeating myself, if other people made it, I can make it. Nothing is impossible. Then, of course, not everything happens but it doesn’t matter does it. The real part is the process is not where you end up. Is living day by day.
Elisa Pardini DSM interview. The co-founder at Pardini Hall Architecture a romantic project with an Italian-English taste.
Marlim: WOW! Fantastic! Tell me about the project you’re most proud of and why. What was your role?
DRI DRI
This was a success when I just started. I really didn’t expect it at all. I didn’t either want to take picture of it thinking it was not important. Instead, that started awards, press and made me feel so much more confident! So, I will say I am the proudest of this because it gave me big energy. Push in my early career. HERE IS A PASTRY PROJECT
Marlim: What’s your creative process? explain to me some works you have done.
Elisa: – The Italian Job – That was a great job. We loved doing it. The client was very open. He wanted our input and design, and that reflected in a space that becomes so recognizable and really perfect for the brand. The creativity here started thinking about the beer manufacture process. Then the materials that reminded us of that (copper) then working with complementary colors. We wanted the design to be impactful, sleek, and to be the focus around the counter. The heart of the space.
Elisa Pardini DSM interview. The co-founder at Pardini Hall Architecture a romantic project with an Italian-English taste. Lucca
Elisa: – 102BG – This was an interesting challenge. As the client wanted something contemporary but the building is a listed grade building. Not only inside the conservation area but also inside the Grosvenor estate. So there were a lot of points of view that needed to all work together. It felt like a Sudoku sometimes! We went with a light approach. Thinking it was less invasive to the building but also the one that bring more natural light inside the house.
Elisa Pardini DSM interview. The co-founder at Pardini Hall Architecture a romantic project with an Italian-English taste. Lucca
Elisa: – Le Volpi _ The Foxes – This is a refurbishment in the middle of the countryside, energy-efficient, sustainable, and full of life. Not minimal at all let’s say, we had the chance to play with colors and textures. The existing structure needed a lot of work and it was the main focus of the project, a refurbishment taking back to life an abandoned and destroyed building. The flow of creativity was natural, building with local material and adding our contemporary vision to it without losing the soul of the building.
MarLim: How does social media impact your firm?
Elisa: I am pretty active on it, but to be completely honest I am not sure they had any impact in the real life. But I feel they are important as a window shop of our work on top of our website.
Elisa Pardini DSM interview. The co-founder at Pardini Hall Architecture a romantic projects with an Italian-English taste.
- “One of the great beauties of architecture is that each time it is like life starting all over again.“
– Renzo Piano. WHAT MEAN? DO YOU AGREE?
Elisa: If it means the fact that each time you have to adapt your mind and each time the entire project is different, yes. It is a process that has a start to the end, and each time you learn from it. I don’t think it never exists a moment that you feel, as an architect, that you have done it all. Is a never-ending growth experience.
MarLim: How is Lucca? I Mean, for artists like us?
Elisa: Lucca is calm. I am happy to be back living in the countryside. So, the calm around me put me in a better physical and emotional place to dedicate to creativity. The office is in the city, a city that is extremely beautiful and loved by its citizens. It is surrounded by 16th-century walls, and I always find it incredible to think that when I walk there, I am doing the same action in the same places that were done by people centuries ago. You breathe history in it.
MarLim: Say a suggestive expression…
Elisa: I am dreaming of becoming a metaverse architect, where gravity is not a limit anymore!
Elisa Pardini DSM interview. The co-founder at Pardini Hall Architecture a romantic project with an Italian-English taste. Lucca
MarLim: Many thanks for your time, have you something to say to our readers?
Elisa: I won’t say anything new I believe, saying that the spaces around us do influence us so much.
From cities, the way we move around, buildings, rooms. We build them as consequences of us – us as a human organism – but they build back us basically. So I feel architects have the tools – because they have studied for it and trained a lot of years for it – to be able to direct where we should go. From a human perception point of view, economical, sustainable. Cities.
Of course, this is not a one-man/woman show, as we need all other knowledge with us (economical, technological, psychological, etc). But we should be so much more part of the conversation on creating our environment while I feel society has forgotten how useful we can be for a common good.
We are seen as not useful enough, not worth, while it is actually so important our rule now on healing our society.
I hope there will be a renaissance of architecture, instead of just being constructed to make money, seeing it as an art that can improve our lives. Understanding that we need to build empathetically with the planet, with the place we are in, and with the people. It is all the same thing really. We are the planet, nature, people.
Pardini Hall Architecture Lucca: website – Pardini Hall Architecture