PIU architecture

PIU: Project In Use —or Progetto In Uso in Italian— is a flexible network of professionals from various disciplines related to the project. Founded in 2004 by Stefano Benatti and Luca Pastorini, the network comprises architects, landscape architects, designers, economists, performers, experts in electronic interactivity, experts in sustainable architecture, who share the idea that the use must guide the design of the project. The members of the PIU network are based in Rome, Paris and Shanghai. The PIU network is flexible and can vary its configuration according to the needs of the project. The fields of expertise offered by the network range from design practice and applied research, to urban economics, the social sciences, communications, expo design and electronic interaction between the space and its users. The shared approach to architectural design is based on the concept of flexibility, understood as the search for new degrees of freedom for the user as well as for the designer. Flexibility is the foundational strategy of our open structure. We study new forms of the construction process’s openness to the many specialized technicians who intervene in the construction site. The result is the emergence of new forms of creativity and participatory design. The open structure is a strategic tool for studying the elements of a structural indeterminacy of the program. It is intended as a stable, conceptual and practical reference grid to conceive open source design and to effect the integration of technological components into architecture.