The studio
Masthead
Studio Portico was founded in 2004 by three architects who met measuring the arcades of Bologna. We are now eleven, and we still measure everything by hand first.
Giulia Ferri
founding partner, urban design
Marco Bellini
partner, landscape
Sara Conti
partner, historic centres
Colophon
- Founded
- Bologna, 2004
- Team
- Eleven architects & landscape architects
- Squares completed
- Twenty-three
- Streets made car-free
- Fourteen kilometres
- Trees planted
- Two thousand and forty
- Competitions won
- Nine, of thirty-one
Essay
Twenty years of shade
When we started, our clients wanted fountains and lighting. Now they ask for shade, water that cools and benches that face each other. Italian summers have changed, and so has what a square is for.
We have learned to plant before we pave, to keep every old tree we can, and to treat the edges of a square — the café tables, the doorsteps, the shop fronts — as carefully as its centre.