‘Stories of contemporary domesticity or HOMEland’, a series curated by Archt. for Archisearch, poses questions about the concept of home through an open dialogue with contemporary architectural practices in housing.
The third episode, follows AMAA in Arzignano at the province of Vicenza, Italy stripping away the interior maximalism of a once-bourgeois two-storey house transforming it into a home as a laboratory thus redefining what it means to be “complete”. 1:1 STUDY MODEL is an ongoing, in-situ investigation on homecoming, domesticity and architecture as an open-ended, ever-evolving process.
Building architecture is one thing. Inhabiting it is another. Both combined simultaneously give us 1:1 STUDY MODEL; A House as a Laboratory by AMAA.
Architect Marcello Galiotto, co-founder of AMAA Collaborative Architecture Office For Research And Development, moved in with his family in the “under construction” site of the two-story building, in the historic center of Arzignano, that is restored to become their family house.
But:
«Dad…there are no doors?»
«No, Camilla, there aren’t. Maybe one day we’ll add them…or perhaps a simple plastic shower curtain will do.»
This is the story of a family turning a tangible house into an intangible home through presence, materiality and the search for primal. 1:1 STUDY MODEL is an ongoing, in-situ investigation on homecoming, domesticity and architecture as an open-ended, ever-evolving process.
Daily life here goes hand in hand with concrete surfaces and bare brick walls. Fully exposed, the guts of architecture whisper tales about imperfection, the value of impromptu solutions, and the phantasy of the eternal return to the archetypal refuge; the cave so as to rediscover its essence.
“Like Carlo Scarpa’s Palazzo Abatellis, the gaze is that of someone observing space as a living organism, in search of unexpected perspectives and subtle relationships between light, matter, and time”, state the architects Marcello Galiotto and Alessandra Rampazzo, founders of AMAA.
Dwelling in an in-between space, a threshold between what is already there and what it is about to be, a home in progress changing textures, colors, and shapes as the days go by gives a lifetime lesson about embracing the moment and the melancholic beauty of impermanence.
“Here dwelling is a living archive where chaos becomes language and error turns into opportunity”, say the architects.
AMAA’s 1:1 Study Model looks like they want to erase the distance between architecture and labour, drawings and the actual trace of the hands. Two years of working and living besides the craftsmen, form a building site made of so much more than stones and plaster, coated in layers of care glued together with books, toys and collections of art.
The helical staircase, the project’s central feature and a recurring theme in AMAA’s work, is celebrated through rough materiality as a literal and metaphorical transition from the earth to the ether; an ascending path culminating in a dome framing the sky.
Home exceeds architecture when it becomes a process occurring in time shaping a state of being. In the same way, 1:1 Study Model by AMAA is “a home in becoming — an experiment in sensitivity and freedom, a daily film about inhabiting, in which architecture and life coincide”.
AMAA at Venice M’Art Gallery of The Venice Venice Hotel
From October 30 to November 27, 2025, Venice M’Art Gallery at The Venice Venice Hotel in Venice, Italy hosts a preview of 1:1 Study Model, one of the latest projects by AMAA, the architecture studio founded by Marcello Galiotto and Alessandra Rampazzo.
Invited to exhibit as part of the Venice M’Art program, the architects present an intimate fragment of their creative and construction process — a work that reflects their ongoing search for new design opportunities and their continuous dialogue between history and making.
Located on the ground floor of the historic Ca’ Da Mosto, within the ancient Sotoportego del Traghetto connecting the courtyard to the Grand Canal in Venice, the exhibition documents the evolving process behind 1:1 Study Model. At the entrance, a model introduces the home’s central spatial device — a helical staircase, spray-painted silver and culminating in a small dome. The staircase becomes both instrument and mediator, while the model as a whole reveals the project’s layers, discoveries, and on-site improvisations.
The exhibition also features a contribution by artist Nero / Alessandro Neretti. His work Rain on Skin — visible only from above in the Arzignano residence — is represented here at full scale by a limited-edition roof tile, displayed on workshop trolleys. The roofing system, with its distinctive device for collecting and channeling rainwater, is further illustrated by a 1:1-scale section of the transparent downspout, shown in the garden.
Numerous detail sketches and a selection of Simone Bossi’s extensive photographic work offer multiple perspectives on the project. Another section is devoted to AMAA – Ways of Seeing, a photographic series realized with Polaroid throughout 2025, illustrating the studio’s gaze upon its own intellectual and sensorial space — often directed toward construction sites. The exhibition concludes with Process Diary, a monumental 900-page volume gathering site visits, notes, exchanges with collaborators and professionals, sketches, and daily observations related to 1:1 Study Model: a living archive available for consultation while seated on the 003 Chair, designed by AMAA in 2025.
The exhibition at The Venice Venice Hotel offers an exclusive preview of AMAA’s design and construction process ahead of the completion of 1:1 Study Model, scheduled for early 2026.
BIO
AMAA collaborative architecture office for research and development was created in 2012 by Marcello Galiotto and Alessandra Rampazzo based in Venice and Arzignano, with a pop-up office in New York since 2024. Among the studio’s recent works is Caffè Nazionale. AMAA was invited by Lesley Lokko to exhibit at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia (2023), and teaches at the Stuart Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania, at the invitation of Rossana Hu.
Facts & Credits
Project title 1:1 Study Model
Typology Restoration, Renovation, House, Residential
Location Arzignano, Vicenza, Italy
Status Ongoing
Architecture AMAA
Photography Simone Bossi
Communication Partner & Press office The Architecture Curator
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