The architecture work of Brazil-based Raul di Pace is guided by creativity and innovation. The firm's focus always comes with the awareness that it is providing a service to its customer. The firms ideas happen naturally, and relate to the needs of the residents and their dreams for the place where they will live. A house is a place that must adapt to fit in with the time for which it is designed, and then it must continue to be a living environment as time and generations evolve. Before, cities had no running water and electricitytoday most things are automated. To follow time is to adapt to new technologies, new materials, new habits and demands. We cannot imagine something as unchangeable, untouchable. A contemporary house cannot be simply a sanctuary. It should primarily be a pleasant space that provides adequate housing that serves the residents before anything else; it is up to the architect to remake, adapt, orient and reorientall the while fulfilling this overall mission. Since the beginning, Raul di Paces architecture is about the search to reinvent oneself, to propose new solutions, built to suit specific purposes. Heavily influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright's work, which was a process of reinvention from start to finish, this highly anticipated volume shows how Raul di Pace continues to reinvent its language based on the same premise: make less, splurge less, seek the essential.
Text in English and Portuguese.
Raul di Paces passion for architecture was ignited through a very strong response to a design-based heritage that stretches back decades through the architectural and design works of his father Ugo di Pace and grandfather Vittorio di Pace, who were both responsible for hundreds of high-profile projects in both Europe and Brazil. After graduating from architecture school in Brazil, Raul di Pace spent many years traveling in Europe, and then the United States to see the work of several of the worlds most renowned architects, such as Wassili and Hans Luckhardt, Peter Behrens, Bruno Taut, Eric Mendelsohn, Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, Paul Rudolph, Eero Saarinen, Richard Neutra, Louis I. Kahn, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. He ventured through Africa, Macau, Hong Kong, and Japan to see works by Tadao Ando, Fumihiko Maki, Shigeru Ban, Toyo Ito, and Kenz Tange. Raul has always been fascinated by the highly contemporary lines in the works of these luminaries; many other architects also contributed a great deal to the expansion of his architectonic repertoire, such as Antoni Gaudķ, Affonso Eduardo Reidy, Renzo Piano, Įlvaro Siza Vieira, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and Norman Foster, among many others. After many decades, Rauls professional practice has accumulated significant experience and developed an enriching architectural language; he continues to evolve and the search for new solutions is what motivates him. He strives for a language with pure and direct lines. His workscovering numerous residential projects and other renovation, adaptation, and restoration of commercial and public projects in Brazil and abroadare characterized by amplitude in the environment and a lightness in form, the integration between the internal and external environment; a combination of nature and the artificial, always taking care to flood the spaces with natural light; revealing Rauls free-spirited approach and aesthetics.
