Founded in Florence in 1988 by Laura Andreini, Marco Casamonti and Giovanni Polazzi, ARCHEA is today a network of more than 100 architects operating in six different citiesaround the world – Milan, Rome, Beijing, Dubai, São Paolo as well as in the headquarter office in Florence. After a couple of years, in 1999, the founding partners were joined by Silvia Fabi, who currently coordinates the design activities of the architecture practice. The firm’s interests and research activities are covering by the landscape and city projects focusing on building design. Even if the focus is on architecture, the projects are surrounding from graphic design to publishing – by the direction and editorship of the architectural international magazine “Area” – as well as from exhibitions to applied research. Besides his or her research in the field of design, each partner of ARCHEA follows many research programs at the architecture schools of Florence and Genoa, there in both schools, architect Marco Casamonti is a full-time professor of the architectural and urban planning program. In 2008 Archea decides to apply for the ISO management system in terms to optimize and rationalize the administrative and productive processes associated with architectural design, guaranteeing a constant quality level. Therefore the firm obtains UNI EN ISO 9001 certification from Moody International to supply the architectural planning services and the supervision of construction works. In the course of the years the firm has been invited to prestigious national and international competitions, winning among others, the Pirelli Office Building competition, the Archaeological Museum competition on the Salerno-Reggio Calabria highway as well as the construction competition of the 90m tall tower at Tirana downtown (Albania), which is currently under construction. The firm has won several international awards and has participated, with their built works, in several editions of the Venice Biennale di Architettura too. The most relevant projects of the firm, in both sectors – public and private – include: the Municipal library of Nembro (Bergamo), the challenge to transform the former Wine Warehouse at Harbour of Trieste, the New Antinori Winery in San Casciano Val di Pesa (Florence), the Social and Educational Centre of Seregno, the UBPA B3-2 Pavilion at the World Expo 2010 in Shanghai, the Green Energy Laboratory for the Jiao Tong University in Shanghai as well as the city of ceramics near Li Ling (Hunan), in China.
