UNO-A is a firm established in 2006 as an evolution of the Piraino Tardini Associated founded in 2000, around a core formed by two partners with different professional training and experience.

UNO-A is a multidisciplinary architectural design studio with different professional skills and background experiences with the aim of looking for a programmatic alchemy between theory, research and professional practices.

The firm is operating on a wide range of scales: from interior design without up to the scale of landscape and urban design, proceeding through residential and commercial buildings.

In collaboration with Studio Gaifami Trombino, the firm was awarded the IQU (Innovation Urban Quality) third prize in 2007, in the section of City and Architecture - new uses and design with the design of a public building of social housing in the Municipality of Carugate (MI). In 2008 the firm was selected in Rizoma - Overground-underground, Young Italian Architects Biennial.

Since the setting up of UNO-A it has had the opportunity to face urban scale aspects, where the complexity of factors, the countless demands involved have had to merge with the buildings and social fabric of cities, projects in which public space is no other than the extension of the buildings and the connective element with what already exists.

The aim of the UNO-A design is to build new urban scenari by using traditional urban planning instruments: if at a small scale we can define spaces using light, materials and details, at a large scale the challenge would be to successfully merge architecture, landscape and urban planning. Just as in the design of our homes interior spaces are often conceived as if they were exterior spaces, as in the case of urban scale the relationship between buildings and landscape and the city.

Since 2006, UNO-A has collaborated directly with government authorities, private and public investors, developers, builders, citizens associations, local and neighbourhood committees, allowing the firm to acquire the skills and ability to develop design responding to demands and expectations that are often very distant, by viewing them as opposites but considering them as elements within the same context, and at the same time offering solutions based on a dialectic opposition.

This has allowed UNO-A to preliminarily define different processes so as to understand them and then find the most appropriate solutions, addressing both designing for new buildings and also design for the conservation and preservation of heritage buildings subject to monumental, historic and landscape protection.

UNO-A considers each of its design as a process of urban, architectural, social and economic change. The design is a story that is told in a constructive format, describing a sequence of places in which people live or will live; it is not only defining a space or a shape but, above all, describing spaces in which events will occur or activities will take place.

UNO-A develops and manages the different aspects of projects such as concept layout, the functional plan, the production of the final and executive technical documentation, research on materials and finishes, studies on facade options, taking on the crucial and pivotal role as the interface among the different professionals required to get good results for each project.

The our most important design practice is to initially define a diagram that summing up the specific architectural potential of each project, a set of instructions, that underlies and organizes the different objectives and the features of any physical reality. Diagrams are considered as a reading and a design instrument as well; more precisely, it is a reading instrument as it is a set of instructions to organize and relate the characteristic elements of each specific reality and project. It is a design instrument that can define the different interpretations and the directions of possible changes.

Thus it is possible to develop design based on reflections on place and culture, economy and society, aiming towards an architecture that is integrated with the urban landscape, linked to the territory, to the culture, to the social fabric and to the environmental features.

UNO-A is an incubator of innovative architecture and urban culture, where building adaptability and urban sustainability are a primary concern where energy efficiency, re-greening and responsible water management are an integral part for the studio’s design philosophy rather than additional elements to be applied to a design solution.

For many years UNO-A has been highly committed to contributing to urban quality and to the definition of constructing parts of the city to be integrated within the contemporary urban fabric, where pvrivate and public spaces “live” together.

The fundamental concept behind each proposal is to create a relationship between people’s quality of life and build an environment dealing with different needs, adapting to different situations and trying to meet in the most appropriate manner, the needs of the interlocutor, in a continuous dialogue among all involved parties.

From urban scale design to the smaller ones, UNO-A design are never isolated spots in the city, on the contrary, they include the whole city with a broader reflection on the urban reality they belong to, in away that the meeting of the specific requirements can become an asset whole city.

UNO-A project activity is developed in workgroups which are defined depending on the specific needs of each project. Every idea is a result of an extensive discussion among the partners; the starting point is a group effort that develops the ideas designed by UNO-A, each of us have in different skills which we use achieve the best possible outcome.

For this reason, to guarantee a high quality standard for all the projects activity, Luca Piraino and his partners follow up each aspect of the design process.