Curaa Studio

Alessandro Baldini, Leo Cogliati, Paolo Failla, Chiara Filippini and Giovanni Perazzi

Curaa Studio is a hybrid collective of architects, artisans, and a landscape designer, founded on collaboration as both method and principle. Their work explores alternative approaches to reuse and care, merging design with material knowledge and construction processes. By engaging directly with the territory and its communities, they create projects that respect context, embrace impermanence, and foster meaningful connections between people, place, and time.

In conversation with Curaa Studio during the exhibition Oltre la pietra at Castelgrande, Bellinzona.

Can you tell us more about your practice?

We are a hybrid team comprising two architects, two artisans, and a landscape architect. At the core of our practice is the collaboration itself, not just as a method, but as a principle. We are, first of all, a team that works together, even through different perspectives. This makes the relationship with every other figure involved essential, whether it’s the municipality, the city council, the heritage authority, the structural engineer, or technical consultants. Collaboration is the foundation for the success of any project. By placing it front and center, we’re able to shape our strategy: understanding how artisans build, what materials are available on a site, how an engineer thinks, all these things influence the outcome. A project is not simply the result of a single inspired idea, but the expression of the time, the place, and all the forces at play within it (...). Every project begins with a love for materials and a deep understanding of detail, from which something meaningful and feasible can grow. In today’s world, building things that are truly appropriate for their context and objectives feels increasingly necessary. We are also deeply interested in the local dimension, recovering ways of living and inhabiting places, and taking care of them. That’s why we chose the name Curaa: care in the sense of the act of making, but also in caring for what has been made. Not just the project we deliver to the world, but the trace we leave behind, something that others will live in and care for in turn.

Could you tell us about the project you exhibited at Oltre la pietra?

What we brought to Matazz was a special project for us. Originally conceived in a different context, we adapted it because we felt that its message resonates powerfully within the setting of the Bellinzona Castle. Instead of creating a purely architectural or artistic piece, we wanted to perform a ritual, a celebration of being together, of creating symbols and landmarks around which people could gather and share experiences.
Our piece, Venus, is about taking time to pause, reflect, and remember what we share (...). Something given to us that speaks of origin, of learning to recognize what the natural world offers, and understanding how it can benefit our bodies. We care about learning the healing properties of natural elements and sharing that knowledge, which holds an ancestral power. Around the fire, one of the oldest human practices we still share, we’re reminded of simplicity, of ceremony, of life itself. As we reflect more and more on what we want to bring into the world, what we want to express and transmit, we’re drawn to the intensity of life, even if that means doing something that feels ephemeral or socially contextual, rather than manifesting it in a purely architectural project. We ask: how can we create spaces that evoke powerful, sensory experiences, ones that stay with you, that trigger memory? Like the big bonfires in Scandinavia to welcome spring, or a sauna built under a bridge, or a plunge into icy water in the middle of a city, those raw, physical experiences awaken questions about how we live. The structure we built, a stacked woodpile, symbolizes a human gesture of care for both people and nature. Arranging firewood for winter, preparing to nourish ourselves, speaks of the deep relationship between humans and the natural world. A gesture that echoes how, if we want to inhabit a place, nature will give back, but it also asks us to be present, to take responsibility.