Raul di Pace (Seeking the Essential)

This monograph showcases the design innovations of the highly regarded and influential Brazilian architect, Raul di PaceRichly illustrated throughout with full-color photography and detailed illustrations, this volume also comprises insightful texts that discuss di Pace’s critical considerations of flexibility, creativity, and connection with the clients’ needs and the ways in which his work brings Brazilian minimalism and a client-based DIY creativity to the changing landscape of South American architectureWith a focus on contemporary Brazilian architecture, this monograph will appeal to designers searching for an approach that results in a complex, layered response to the challenges of place, form, and identityThe 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 firm’s 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 electricity—today 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 reorient—all the while fulfilling this overall mission. Since the beginning, Raul di Pace’s 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.