Marco Casagrande (born 1971) graduated from the Helsinki University of Technology Department of Architecture in 2001.
From the early stages of his career Casagrande started to mix architecture with other disciplines of art and science landing with a series of ecologically conscious architectural installations around the world. All in all, more than 70 realised works in 14 countries.
He is the laureate of the European Prize for Architecture 2013, Committee of International Architecture Critics CICA Award 2013 for conceptual and artistic architecture and UNESCO & Locus Foundation’s Global Award for Sustainable Architecture 2015.
Casagrande’s works and teaching are moving freely in-between architecture, landscape architecture, urban and environmental design and science, environmental art and circus adding up into cross-over architectural thinking of “commedia dell’architettura”, a broad vision of built human environment tied into social drama and environmental awareness. «There is no other reality than nature». He views architects as design shamans merely interpreting what the bigger nature of the shared mind is transmitting.
He views cities as complex energy organisms in which different overlapping layers of energy flows are determining the actions of the citizens as well as the development of the city. By mixing environmentalism and urban design Casagrande is developing methods of punctual manipulation of the urban energy flows in order to create an ecologically sustainable urban development towards the so-called Third Generation City. The theory views the future urban development as the ruin of the industrial city, an organic machine ruined by nature including human nature.
https://www.casagrandelaboratory.com
