Young, skilled and with very clear ideas: creating something nice and sustainable by shaking – why not – old institutions. Ivana Laura Solange, thirty-five year old Designer from Catania, graduates in Architecture in 2007 with highest honours. The connection to Sicily, her region, is strong and active (like the volcano that stands above her few kilometres away) and the wish and determination of putting herself immediately on the line helps her opening her own studio in 2010, where she plans and activates central ideas between recycling and modernity. Her field ranges from city and garden planning to architectural, residential, commercial, business planning careful to low energy consumption, up to interior and exterior design.

 

Let’s say that you followed your father’s footsteps, com- ing from a family of businesspeople and carpenters. How much did this affect your professional choice?

I have been observing and admiring my father, his enthusiasm on constructions sites together with the one of labourers in watching the building stage and his being polite and reliable with clients since I was a child. I believe that all this affected my child pastime, given that one of my favourite games was drawing houses and their spaces, imagining some dolls moving within them. At mature age, I had the confirmation that it was not only a game, as I wanted to go beyond construction; I wanted to plan by watching the landscape, studying the natural light that transforms spaces, I aspired to poetry of the project.

Not only architecture, but also design. This year, you won the first edition of the Tao Awards Talent Design with your outdoor collection “Ray of Sunshine“. What did it mean to you?

For a Sicilian, who loves her home region and her own work, being architect and designer, receiving such a prestigious award means Made in Italy pride on a National scale, and Made in Sicily, since the outdoor furniture collection Ray of Sunshine is entirely produced by Sicilians. An achievement joining the one met at the Fuori Salone of Milan 2015, where the collection was shown with the acknowledgement of the Design Selection of Archiproduction, which is only given to 250 brands and companies on an international level.

In few years, you already achieved a portfolio of suc- cessful professional, ranging from restoration projects to new residents, and also realizing works for the sacred world. Which one makes you feel a stronger emotion?

Each architecture and design work is an emotion, a growth. An emotional involvement, because the place changes, the one or the ones that go live, work, socialize there will change. I love residential projects for disabled situated on a panoramic hill overlook the sea and therefore planned in close visual and physical relation to the outside; a glazed volume nestled between rock with cypresses mirroring against the wind and the reflection of water in the pool, and an upper volume imagined like a telescope in direction of the landscape; I love spirituality and human dimension you have in every project, emphasized in the sacred.

What are the limits and opportunities a young Sicilian has to cope with to succeed professionally?

Being a young Sicilian is like being a flower born from a new graft replanted in a soil processed with traditional systems; if you could support all this, innovation, beauty and tradition with an economic system that differs from our national one, and you would work by focusing on intellectual and artisan skills, everything would be really much easier.

How important is it for an architect to cooperate with ADI nowadays?

Feeling like being part of the world of Italian design also means knowing and experiencing a prestigious institution, such as ADI. I hope that my contribution in Sicily can lead our Island also abroad, besides all parts of Italy.

Your future projects?

A world leading company of products brining natural light and ventilation captivated me on the Day Light Challenge, a team including 13 Sicilian architects with the aim of transferring to the end-user. I have always found it important in architecture of new constructions as well as in the recycling of existing things; bringing natural light and comfort back to the centre of the project for environmental and bio-architectural planning.

Song suggested to read this article: Nine Types of Industrial Pollution – Frank Zappa