Stefano Boeri 2g International Architecture Magazine 62 Alexei Muratov by Alexei Muratov, Bart Lootsma 9788425224539, 8425224535 instant download after payment.

Zoom 0: two offices To go looking for the person whose projects appear in this magazine in his studio would be a waste of time. Not that the cosy apartment on Via Donizetti is empty: there are two dozen employees working in it. The “senior guys” here are barely more than forty years old. From time to time, one or other of them occupies the master’s office/study. This small room with a desk and bookshelves all along one wall serves sometimes as a meeting room, sometimes as a place in which people can work in peace and quiet, away from the other rooms. And although Stefano Boeri lives somewhere nearby, he has not been seen in his studio for a long time —in fact, since the middle of spring 2011, when he took up his post as cultural advisor to Milan City Hall. In order to meet this architect-turned-politician, you have to leave the tranquil 19th-century bourgeois neighborhood of his studio and head for the impressive Duomo. The cultural advisor’s office is situated in the east wing of the Palazzo Reale. Our meeting is scheduled for 12 noon. I sit in the reception area, an elongated space with walls covered in pinkish stucco. It is crowned by a cylindrical vault painted with trompe-l’oeil rhomboid caissons. There is silence except for the noise of a fan. A long Rococo sofa (gilded frame, purple upholstery) is shared by a number of other people in addition to us. Their intelligent, animated faces remind me of paintings by Italian old masters and leave me with no doubt that we are in the company of eminent cultural figures. Next to the sofa is a snow-white-marble sculpture of a weeping angel —something in between a Maillol and a Botero. On the stand opposite are posters for La Scala productions such as Falstaff, Carmen, Madam Butterfly, and so on. And then Stefano Boeri appears, surrounded by assistants. He quickly shakes hands with everyone. We proceed single file into his study, and the eminent cultural figures again freeze into position on the sofa. ...