Carmelo Zappulla
Carmelo Zappulla is a PhD architect and founding partner of Barcelona based External Reference Architects.
He studied architecture at the Università degli Studi di Palermo, graduating with Honors and special mention, and holds a PhD (European Mention) with Honors from Universidad Politécnica de Catalunya, Barcelona.
Together with Nacho Toribio, Zappulla runs, External Reference Architects, a firm active in design and research in the fields of sensorial spaces, interior design, architecture, and landscape design. He received “New Italian Blood” 1st prize as best Italian office under 36 (2010), with the International Award: 1st Prize in EXHIBITOR Magazine’s 29th Annual Exhibit Design Awards competition (2014) and the 2nd Prize Europan 8.
He is currently Faculty member at IAAC (Instituto de Arquitectura Avanzada de Catalunya) and teacher at IED (Istituto Europeo di Design), where he is also the director of the Master’s Degree program in Interior Design. He collaborates with different architectural schools and institutions, including Strathclyde University, WSA (The Welsh School of Architecture), the Department of Architecture at Cardiff University, Wales, Uk.
His work has been exhibited at the Biennale in Venice, during the 12th International Architecture Exhibition, at MAXXI, Rome, at Eme3, Barcelona, Europan 8, Oslo.
His publications include scientific articles published by Routledge and projects published in Future, Il Sole 24 ore, Blueprint, Materia, Frame, Dezeen, Domus, in the books Architect's notebook and Architectural process 2014 by Damdi Publishing co, among others.
Address: Barcelona
He studied architecture at the Università degli Studi di Palermo, graduating with Honors and special mention, and holds a PhD (European Mention) with Honors from Universidad Politécnica de Catalunya, Barcelona.
Together with Nacho Toribio, Zappulla runs, External Reference Architects, a firm active in design and research in the fields of sensorial spaces, interior design, architecture, and landscape design. He received “New Italian Blood” 1st prize as best Italian office under 36 (2010), with the International Award: 1st Prize in EXHIBITOR Magazine’s 29th Annual Exhibit Design Awards competition (2014) and the 2nd Prize Europan 8.
He is currently Faculty member at IAAC (Instituto de Arquitectura Avanzada de Catalunya) and teacher at IED (Istituto Europeo di Design), where he is also the director of the Master’s Degree program in Interior Design. He collaborates with different architectural schools and institutions, including Strathclyde University, WSA (The Welsh School of Architecture), the Department of Architecture at Cardiff University, Wales, Uk.
His work has been exhibited at the Biennale in Venice, during the 12th International Architecture Exhibition, at MAXXI, Rome, at Eme3, Barcelona, Europan 8, Oslo.
His publications include scientific articles published by Routledge and projects published in Future, Il Sole 24 ore, Blueprint, Materia, Frame, Dezeen, Domus, in the books Architect's notebook and Architectural process 2014 by Damdi Publishing co, among others.
Address: Barcelona
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Doctoral Thesis by Carmelo Zappulla
Papers by Carmelo Zappulla
resource in consolidated emerging urban
economies. Alternative fresh water resources and
public wastewater management represent one of
the most valuable services. However fresh water
requires an adequate and advanced depuration
technique: the Integrated System of Phytodepuration
(ISP).
The expansion of mega-cities worldwide has
generated many derelict voids. The proliferation of
highly polluted brownfields is a constant
characteristic, which is likely to continue and
increase in future. If left to fall into neglectfulness
and urban inertia, these spaces will have a
detrimental effect on local neighborhoods in
terms of social health, wellbeing, local economies
and environmental qualities. The development of
urban parks in urban voids has been generically
implemented without environmental and
ecological recovery strategies. Waterscape is not
just an aesthetic feature but also a decisive
element in the production of the space. The
construction of manmade wetlands (bioremediators)
offers landscape, ecological and
environmental qualities that heal polluted
environments.
This study explores innovative waterscape
systems in the brownfield of Magok basin, Seoul:
http://issuu.com/cristiansuau/docs/urban_park_se
oul. The landscape design scheme reproduces
natural self-depurative processes in a controllable
environment by taking into account both the
strategic location and necessity for ecological
remediation. Innovative water-terracing systems
(eco-formations) are proposed as water
phytodepuration treatment. It consists of
offsetting contaminants on wastewater surface,
through the establishing of native plants and
aeration. These terraces are dwelled by aquatic
plants (macrophytes), which reproduce the natural
purification processes frequently in humid
climates.
The development of this “artificial wetland
scheme” is based on octagonal eco-formations.
They aim to create a social catalyst as well as a
healthy environment, providing recreation and
amenities combined with the gray water biological
and distillation treatments.
Worldwide slums are facing a massive problem of water collection, harvesting and distribution, in arid coastal context. The challenge is to design autonomous water-making devices able to decentralise the monopoly of water supplier and the dependence of the main grid.
Water provision is a fundamental challenge in many rural and slums settlements in arid lands today. The risks associated with water shortage increase as the limited freshwater resources gradually diminish resulting in ineffective central water distribution. AIRDRIP© is a pneumatic air-frame water collection technique by using pneumatic space-frames and nets. In essence, this technology traps and harvests water in coastal deserts through a passive process of fog condensation. The collected water can be directly used for drinking and sanitation (prior water purification) as well as in green public spaces and urban agriculture.
This study proposes an inflatable three-dimensional fog collector, which harvests fog water for drinking, agricultural irrigation and ecological restoration. Both a space-frame polyhedral structure and hydrophobic net was preliminarily tested in the Atacama coast, Chile (FOGHIVE, 2014) in order to increase water yield in arid contexts. However the main obstacle for many fogtraps is the intermittence of winds and fog occurrence. In order to achieve water intersection and therefore harvest it, AIRDRIP© has to face wind multi-directionally; improve drainage system and augment mesh surface to capture atmospheric water. In the case of the Camanchaca phenomenon (Atacama Desert), its mesh offers specialised textile pattern and filaments; water-repellent features; and multi-directional wind-faced array. This new design demonstrates the simplicity of tubular air-frame beams and rings, ballast tank and strap connectors.
Rather than a prescriptive design, AIRDRIP© is an open system that stimulates future colonisation scenarios in arid lands. It stimulates the autonomy of local communities against the unbalanced control and distribution of water in poor countries by facilitating the right to clean water at any societal level. AIRDRIP© design is mainly focused on eco-design materials and techniques by reusing industrial polymers through remaking or other media.
This research offers a radical design for pneumatic fog collection in urban and rural settlements along the Atacama coast (Coquimbo region, Chile) and other similar climates on Earth.
Keywords: Fog collection; autonomous water management; water shortage in arid settlements; pneumatic space-frames; rubber remaking
But just what transforms matter into built systems?
The answer is: “techno-patterns”, patterns of materiality and physical organization.
The work on matter has implications for the development of patterns, configurations of relationships that are able to integrate many architectural levels.
In the process of determination of relationships, technology is not only an instrument but is creative form, it is part of the design process, it is “revelation”. Technology provides transparency, kinetic responsiveness, geometries that define complex surfaces or robotic manufacturing processes.
In this article we will briefly see how the role and use of technology has been transformed in the conception of architectural skins and the latter’s relationship with their environmental context.
Mega-slums are dynamic laboratories for urban pattern making. Instead of surveying about stable urban symbols represented by formal orders and regular geometries, this study explores the semantic meaning of informal urbanism associated with chaos or randomness and often ignored by critique and conventions. Slums are forms of ‘instant urbanity’ that underscore alternative ways of self-organisation, which include bottom-up strategies, autonomous urban dynamics and spatial activation by remaking.
Are slum patterns representing a lack of symbolism or, on contrary, rich, complex, and fluid urban idioms? Urban informality without planning offers immense opportunities to investigate resilient urban forms and languages as complex systems throughout self-ruled structures. Slums are not only the result of urban economic asymmetries and social marginalisation but the elementary construction of survival urbanism, a randomised, agile and transformative pattern system.
Slum making is a form of subsistence urbanity that constructs transitory, elusive or spontaneous geometries. They differ in sizes, magnitudes and geometries regarding cultural, climatic and topographic conditions. Slums are unstable systems in continuous transformation. This essay questions the stigmatisation of informalised urban patterns as ‘other’ unclassified codes by analysing a selection of twenty mega-slums in the Americas, Africa and Asia regarding semantics, urban and geometrical meanings. Their urban tissues contain various symbols that activate the every-day production of spaces. They can be visible or invisible; passive or active; and formal or informal. A taxonomic tree of slums was developed to compare and map slum regions to describe similarities and differences among the selected case studies. From this analysis, a profound discourse appeared between informal settlements: tissue-patterns at macro level and cell-patterns in micro urbanisation. Does the macro pattern inform the micro, or vice versa?
One could say, albeit naively, that mathematics provides us with abstract and general models, whereas nature utilises them with a certain degree of freedom, insofar as it is constrained by external factors such as the quality of the soil, the amount of sunlight available, the presence of plants, etc. The metaphor of nature’s interpreting geometry also helps us discard as a misunderstanding any reductive interpretation of the architect’s work as being exclusively based on an out of hand and uncritical use of geometrical patterns. The process of using patterns has to be conceived of as an intellectual exchange between the ideal elements of geometry and architecture’s pragmatism.
One of the major goals of this paper is to demonstrate, by using historical and contemporary evidence, patterns’ aptness to suit the high demands of contemporary architectural work. I argue that this is not specifically related to today’s architectural scenario. On the contrary, a substantial part of the article is devoted to the examination of how architects have taken advantage of the opportunities offered by mathematics and their respective contributions to the advancement of mathematics. In particular, I will be looking at three case study examples of this connection between architecture and mathematics, which will help bring to light the following:
1. how mathematics can be reduced to visual patterns, which offer a wide range of formal and diagrammatic interpretation within architectural work,
2. how the use of mathematical patterns does not restrain the designer’s creativity (on the contrary, its abstract characteristics can produce novelties),
3. whether – consciously or unconsciously – mathematical patterns are formal tools which allow coherence,
4. how mathematical patterns can help the systemic development of a project, and
5. how geometry can induce formal control, but cannot ensure the project’s success alone.
The paper is essentially an expository survey, and includes detailed analysis within the later sections. I will begin by defining mathematical patterns.
resource in consolidated emerging urban
economies. Alternative fresh water resources and
public wastewater management represent one of
the most valuable services. However fresh water
requires an adequate and advanced depuration
technique: the Integrated System of Phytodepuration
(ISP).
The expansion of mega-cities worldwide has
generated many derelict voids. The proliferation of
highly polluted brownfields is a constant
characteristic, which is likely to continue and
increase in future. If left to fall into neglectfulness
and urban inertia, these spaces will have a
detrimental effect on local neighborhoods in
terms of social health, wellbeing, local economies
and environmental qualities. The development of
urban parks in urban voids has been generically
implemented without environmental and
ecological recovery strategies. Waterscape is not
just an aesthetic feature but also a decisive
element in the production of the space. The
construction of manmade wetlands (bioremediators)
offers landscape, ecological and
environmental qualities that heal polluted
environments.
This study explores innovative waterscape
systems in the brownfield of Magok basin, Seoul:
http://issuu.com/cristiansuau/docs/urban_park_se
oul. The landscape design scheme reproduces
natural self-depurative processes in a controllable
environment by taking into account both the
strategic location and necessity for ecological
remediation. Innovative water-terracing systems
(eco-formations) are proposed as water
phytodepuration treatment. It consists of
offsetting contaminants on wastewater surface,
through the establishing of native plants and
aeration. These terraces are dwelled by aquatic
plants (macrophytes), which reproduce the natural
purification processes frequently in humid
climates.
The development of this “artificial wetland
scheme” is based on octagonal eco-formations.
They aim to create a social catalyst as well as a
healthy environment, providing recreation and
amenities combined with the gray water biological
and distillation treatments.
Worldwide slums are facing a massive problem of water collection, harvesting and distribution, in arid coastal context. The challenge is to design autonomous water-making devices able to decentralise the monopoly of water supplier and the dependence of the main grid.
Water provision is a fundamental challenge in many rural and slums settlements in arid lands today. The risks associated with water shortage increase as the limited freshwater resources gradually diminish resulting in ineffective central water distribution. AIRDRIP© is a pneumatic air-frame water collection technique by using pneumatic space-frames and nets. In essence, this technology traps and harvests water in coastal deserts through a passive process of fog condensation. The collected water can be directly used for drinking and sanitation (prior water purification) as well as in green public spaces and urban agriculture.
This study proposes an inflatable three-dimensional fog collector, which harvests fog water for drinking, agricultural irrigation and ecological restoration. Both a space-frame polyhedral structure and hydrophobic net was preliminarily tested in the Atacama coast, Chile (FOGHIVE, 2014) in order to increase water yield in arid contexts. However the main obstacle for many fogtraps is the intermittence of winds and fog occurrence. In order to achieve water intersection and therefore harvest it, AIRDRIP© has to face wind multi-directionally; improve drainage system and augment mesh surface to capture atmospheric water. In the case of the Camanchaca phenomenon (Atacama Desert), its mesh offers specialised textile pattern and filaments; water-repellent features; and multi-directional wind-faced array. This new design demonstrates the simplicity of tubular air-frame beams and rings, ballast tank and strap connectors.
Rather than a prescriptive design, AIRDRIP© is an open system that stimulates future colonisation scenarios in arid lands. It stimulates the autonomy of local communities against the unbalanced control and distribution of water in poor countries by facilitating the right to clean water at any societal level. AIRDRIP© design is mainly focused on eco-design materials and techniques by reusing industrial polymers through remaking or other media.
This research offers a radical design for pneumatic fog collection in urban and rural settlements along the Atacama coast (Coquimbo region, Chile) and other similar climates on Earth.
Keywords: Fog collection; autonomous water management; water shortage in arid settlements; pneumatic space-frames; rubber remaking
But just what transforms matter into built systems?
The answer is: “techno-patterns”, patterns of materiality and physical organization.
The work on matter has implications for the development of patterns, configurations of relationships that are able to integrate many architectural levels.
In the process of determination of relationships, technology is not only an instrument but is creative form, it is part of the design process, it is “revelation”. Technology provides transparency, kinetic responsiveness, geometries that define complex surfaces or robotic manufacturing processes.
In this article we will briefly see how the role and use of technology has been transformed in the conception of architectural skins and the latter’s relationship with their environmental context.
Mega-slums are dynamic laboratories for urban pattern making. Instead of surveying about stable urban symbols represented by formal orders and regular geometries, this study explores the semantic meaning of informal urbanism associated with chaos or randomness and often ignored by critique and conventions. Slums are forms of ‘instant urbanity’ that underscore alternative ways of self-organisation, which include bottom-up strategies, autonomous urban dynamics and spatial activation by remaking.
Are slum patterns representing a lack of symbolism or, on contrary, rich, complex, and fluid urban idioms? Urban informality without planning offers immense opportunities to investigate resilient urban forms and languages as complex systems throughout self-ruled structures. Slums are not only the result of urban economic asymmetries and social marginalisation but the elementary construction of survival urbanism, a randomised, agile and transformative pattern system.
Slum making is a form of subsistence urbanity that constructs transitory, elusive or spontaneous geometries. They differ in sizes, magnitudes and geometries regarding cultural, climatic and topographic conditions. Slums are unstable systems in continuous transformation. This essay questions the stigmatisation of informalised urban patterns as ‘other’ unclassified codes by analysing a selection of twenty mega-slums in the Americas, Africa and Asia regarding semantics, urban and geometrical meanings. Their urban tissues contain various symbols that activate the every-day production of spaces. They can be visible or invisible; passive or active; and formal or informal. A taxonomic tree of slums was developed to compare and map slum regions to describe similarities and differences among the selected case studies. From this analysis, a profound discourse appeared between informal settlements: tissue-patterns at macro level and cell-patterns in micro urbanisation. Does the macro pattern inform the micro, or vice versa?
One could say, albeit naively, that mathematics provides us with abstract and general models, whereas nature utilises them with a certain degree of freedom, insofar as it is constrained by external factors such as the quality of the soil, the amount of sunlight available, the presence of plants, etc. The metaphor of nature’s interpreting geometry also helps us discard as a misunderstanding any reductive interpretation of the architect’s work as being exclusively based on an out of hand and uncritical use of geometrical patterns. The process of using patterns has to be conceived of as an intellectual exchange between the ideal elements of geometry and architecture’s pragmatism.
One of the major goals of this paper is to demonstrate, by using historical and contemporary evidence, patterns’ aptness to suit the high demands of contemporary architectural work. I argue that this is not specifically related to today’s architectural scenario. On the contrary, a substantial part of the article is devoted to the examination of how architects have taken advantage of the opportunities offered by mathematics and their respective contributions to the advancement of mathematics. In particular, I will be looking at three case study examples of this connection between architecture and mathematics, which will help bring to light the following:
1. how mathematics can be reduced to visual patterns, which offer a wide range of formal and diagrammatic interpretation within architectural work,
2. how the use of mathematical patterns does not restrain the designer’s creativity (on the contrary, its abstract characteristics can produce novelties),
3. whether – consciously or unconsciously – mathematical patterns are formal tools which allow coherence,
4. how mathematical patterns can help the systemic development of a project, and
5. how geometry can induce formal control, but cannot ensure the project’s success alone.
The paper is essentially an expository survey, and includes detailed analysis within the later sections. I will begin by defining mathematical patterns.
New tools, both theoretical and pragmatic, are needed to analyse and understand contemporary architectural phenomena. For this to happen, the relationship between mathematical models and architecture needs to be cemented and a pattern seen as an invaluable component of architecture. A methodology based on my belief that Complexity Theory could be the basis for interpreting architecture and pattern as structure, in order to transform the abstract into reality. Within this theoretical frame, some projects of External Reference Architects will be analysed: techno landscapes aimed to produce deep sensory experiences, through space, light, music and projections.