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Jan 15,2006 - Jan 22,2006 |
27 - Architect goes global
Classical-trained designer has projects in China, Portugal, Siberia
By Antonio Maglio
Originally Published: 2002-12-22
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Francesco Scolozzi
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What's an Italian architect with a solid classical background doing in Canada?
In this country, as in the United States, "real" architecture is hard to find. In fact, what one finds here for the most part can be called "pseudo-architecture," which abounds in Doric and Corinthian columns erected for questionable aesthetic reasons, with no practical function to justify their existence.
What one also finds, to one's chagrin, are houses made of yellow bricks and wood, which are supposed to reproduce the trabeations of the Parthenon. Here the ample, Renaissance-like spaces that distinguish luxury houses are traversed by unsightly black wood and by Tudor-style lime, whose upward rise is interrupted on the second floor by French mansards.
Returning to the original question, what is this architect doing in Canada?
The question draws a smile from Francesco Scolozzi, who hails from Bari but who grew up in Bologna and in Florence.
"I'm simply trying to do my job. At the same time, I'm trying to avoid making all the compromises I would have had to make if I were still in Italy," he answers.
"Here, people have a superficial sense of culture compared to our own, but their demands are less burdensome. All they ask you to do is work hard. And if you're good enough, you'll succeed. But if you're a hack, you'll starve," he concludes tersely.
Scolozzi, of course, did succeed. He's the head of one of the most prestigious architectural studios in Toronto, Scolozzi Architect Inc., with commissions pouring in not only from all over Canada, but also from the United States, Portugal, China, Siberia and elsewhere. Scolozzi has created some of the most important buildings in Toronto (the Banca Commerciale Italiana building, the Italian Institute for Foreign Trade building and the Yonge Balliol Centre, to name a few) as well as vast complexes throughout the world, such as the Reception Centre in Shanghai, China, created in collaboration with Project Planning, where within a one-and-a-half-square-kilometer area he has made five-million square meters of livable space-roughly the same as in all of Toronto.
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