We work on architecture as a field of research and innovation.
We work on human needs and built environment with responsibility and respectfulness.
We work on quality and iconicity as a mission.
We work on architecture as a form of human expression and as an act of broad optimism.
The studio took its first steps in early 1970s, initially dealing with planning commissions. We started the new millennium with one of the first examples of industrial heritage reuse in Emilia-Romagna region (Fonderia Lombardini Aterballetto). The year 2009 saw a major turning point, when Zamboni Associati officially took its name and started dealing with large scale and complex programatic challenges, in Italy and abroad. Since then, we pursued a method of working in which both the big scale and the detail are achieved with the same quality. To do so, a well-established expertise is required to carefully interact with clients and partners throughout the design and the realisation phase. ZAA has realized and designed commercial and industrial buildings, public spaces, restorations, regeneration plans, urban and landscape masterplans. We take part in national and international competitions and we are active in the field of exhibition design; we face each project as a unique challenge that pivots around a fruitful discussion with clients and contractors.
Driven by the curiosity in new forms of living and working, we merge complex programs at any scale with crafted solutions. We deal with architecture, interior and urban design, combining professional expertise at different scales with spatial innovation and regeneration, crossing boundaries between sectors and regions.
Areas Of Expertise
Regeneration
Coexistence of old and new is a delicate subject to us: how can new opportunities arise by working on a pre-existing reality? Can this be done with continuity extended beyond the physical life of a building? By carefully balancing past and future, a new state of things may spring out, either by reconstruction, addition, insertion, refurbishment, rearrangement or restoration. We are keen to investigate and regenerate relations within urban and territorial fabric, merging heritage with present needs and contemporary vision.
Workspaces
Our working scenario is experiencing a major conceptual evolution, and so do our daily needs, driven by new technologies underlying an epochal change of perspective. Can we imagine a workplace as a dynamic reality? Can we conceive new spaces to be responsive about this? Our vision is for mixed-use facilities blended with connected services, challenging the traditional idea of workspaces towards a more efficient and innovation-driven method.
Retail
Organizing a retail space is much more than creating the background for selling products: it is offering an exceptional and unique experience to be immersed in. Our approach mixes an attention for the products and brand’s corporate needs with a tailored way to show them through forms and materials and working in the thin border between imagined and perceived space. We believe that spatial quality is able to endorse a brand’s identity and strategy, eventually turning them into an institution.
Public Spaces
Public space is the highest expression of a society. To envision it is the most beautiful and complex challenge that our profession faces. Conscious of this responsibility, we face the commitment of a constant research to enrich our experience in the field. Creating well-functioning public spaces is a fundamental question. We address it by thinking how people could cooperate through that, in addition to the sheer services of it. Stemming from humanistic values, our work and research deal with urban spaces and public buildings convinced that both contribute to public space in a reciprocal exchange.
Urban & Territorial Scale
The dimension of a project comes not only by the scale, but also by the perspective of it. In that sense, urban and territorial projects bring factors of complexity that require a broader vision. Our expertise with large scale realities in built environment is better associated with masterplans, on which we work at different levels: infrastructure, mobility, landscape, sustainability and environment are addressed on urban and territorial, local and international scale. We believe the potential of cities in merging public and private spaces in an articulate and iconic way.
