A skilful hand

There are two magical moments in architecture: the first when the idea comes tomind, as the initial graphics are traced out, and the second whwn the project is ac-tually being constructed, just before the building work is completed. The way to understand Jean Marc Schivo’s art, and it really sketches but proper graphic representations of ideas put down on paper, which, if examined carefully, look like the end product of a graphic design of the highest poetic-artistic quality providing a stylistic imprint for the professional architectural design that then follows.
This method of design is shared by all those other great designers with “magic hands”, who, blessed with the talent of being able to express ideas throught signs, manage to make a physical rendering of a project in no time at all. You can actually be a fine designer without actually being able to draw or design by hand, but, if you also have the mental gift of being able to pictures objects three-dimensionally, it does allow you to condense into just a few signs all the aesthetic and technological traits and features that the project will only fully express when it is finally built. His projects, which are always very cutting-edge in their stylistic idioms and methods, do not perhaps allow for variations or reductions that might, first of all, spoll the origi-nal dream and then most certainly detract from that very individual trace that Schivo is so determined to leave on the landscape, as a personal testimony to his great de-sire, shared by all architects, to improve the modern-day builtscape.

Cesare Maria Casati
Director of l’Arca International