(I) Mantia Studio, which was founded in Rome in 1999, explores the possibility of an experimental architecture and is concerned with new methodologies for interpreting the present-day city. Mantia is trying to develop an urban and public system, whose many different layers can apply an extreme flexibility, suited to reacting to a wide range of situations. In 1999, the agency was awarded a prize at the Europan 5 competition, together with the architect Sofia Vyzoviti, for a project for the Athens-Amaroussion site, developing a maximum number of open surfaces. Carpethouse represents an example of dealing with form and programme which makes it possible to tackle issues which daily confront the architect: producing programes and forms which are coherent with contemporary lifestyles, while at the same time respecting the rules and regulations of city-planning and construction. The solutions it puts forward by way of the project for this particular house, located in nothern Italy, represent an attempt to distort these rules and regulations, an attempt which respects the landscape but at the same time introduces a new way of life into it.

Mantia Studio
Mantia (Giuseppe) (1964)
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• Carpethouse 2000