THE PLAN 166, the seventh issue of 2025

THE PLAN 166, the seventh issue of 2025, includes a special section dedicated to Italian architecture. The cover features the Calder Gardens project by Herzog & de Meuron.

In the editorial, “Circular Design Reprogramming the Future,” Yasmin Rehmanjee discusses circular design as a paradigm shifter for the construction industry. She argues that the approach will change a wasteful linear model to a regenerative, collaborative model, enabling emission reductions, material reuse, and the design of buildings intended to be disassembled, adapted, and reborn, thereby turning construction into a sustainable, creative, and collective process for the future.

In his Letter From America column, Raymund Ryan reports on Calder Gardens in Philadelphia, designed by Herzog & de Meuron with landscape architect Piet Oudolf. This is a place where architecture, art, and nature merge in a subterranean, contemplative dialogue dedicated to the work of Alexander Calder.

The Transport section focuses on the Damen Green Line Transit Station in Chicago by Perkins&Will as a contemporary example of infrastructure architecture in which structure, building systems, and materials are put on show and translated into architectural language.

In the Conversation column, Philip Jodidio looks at Frida Escobedo, one of the most promising figures in contemporary architecture. Combining her Latin American roots with an international language, her work reinterprets materials, light, and memory of place. With architecture that brings together cultural sensitivity, a craftbased monumentalism, and close attention to how humans experience space, Escobedo’s architectural vision has consolidated her role as a leading figure on the global stage.

In Cuolm da Vi, Tujetsch, Switzerland, the Parvis Refuge by michele zago architetti is an example of architecture integrated into the landscape – a sustainable, camouflaged building that combines social, hospitality, and sports functions in balance with the natural environment.

In Italy, Barreca & La Varra has transformed Tortona’s Cittadella dello Sport into an urban complex where geometry and symbolism merge in a poetic architectural language that unites form, function, and a sense of community.

In Piove di Sacco, Padua, Atelier Architettura Chinello Morandi (AACM) has reinterpreted the Kinder Rain preschool as a village for children where tradition and innovation combine in sustainable, poetic architecture.

A.c.M.e.’s design of the Tipolitografia Zardini headquarters is light, transparent architecture in which fluid volumes in glass and metal merge with the local landscape. The result is an open, light-filled, and sustainable production facility that combines industrial efficiency, technological innovation, and a harmonious dialogue with its surroundings.

3ndy has breathed new life into Villa Marchi in Noventa Padovana with a project that combines restoration and contemporary reinterpretation while preserving architect Oscar Marchi’s original intentions. With respect and sensitivity, 3ndy has emphasized the 1950s villa’s original materials, construction details, and composition, while transforming it into a functional, contemporary home, in which memory, craftsmanship, and innovation harmoniously interact.

Gosplan, Giordano Hadamik Architects (GHA), caarpa, and studio.skey have transformed Villa a Recco into a sophisticated dialogue between architecture and landscape, recomposing a fragmented existing structure into an organic, contemporary whole. Leveraging natural materials, measured geometries, and a deep integration with context, the architects have restored the home’s original unity, blending history and modernity, built form and nature, in a balance of harmony and visual continuity.

In its reinterpretation of the gable roof archetype in T+T, a semidetached residence in Cattolica, Piraccini+Potente Architettura has transformed the home into an abstract, contemporary statement – a single organism in which light, sustainability, and authentic materiality define a home poised between technological innovation, formal rigor, and environmental sensitivity.

In Jesolo, Ruggero Baldasso Architects approached the Passive Villa project in the Novaplan development as a statement of energyconscious, geometric architecture, selecting the tetrahedron as the generating form for a development of nine villas with CasaClima Gold Nature–certified “very high efficiency.”

Studio Kuadra’s Dante 47 project in Cuneo has updated the city’s urban fabric through sculptural, compact, material-driven architecture shaped by subtraction. Elegant and contemporary, the design interprets the Piedmont vernacular through understated elegance, combining innovation, residential quality, and a harmonious dialogue with the urban context.

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