Cino Zucchi: Copying as Creative Act in Architecture

Architect Cino Zucchi, founder of CZA, challenges the obsession with originality in contemporary architecture. In a lecture titled "Copycat. Empathy and Envy as Form Makers" at the XIV meeting of the Italian Association of Architecture and Criticism (AIAC) in Lecce, directed by Luigi Prestinenza Puglisi, Zucchi argued that copying is not mediocrity but an evolutionary gesture. He cites Josef Frank (1931), Paul Valéry, and Karl Kraus to support his view that every form has a precedent. Zucchi's installation at the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale (curated by David Chipperfield) displayed objects from Rajasthan rolling pins to Milanese facades as a catalog of mutations. His projects exemplify this philosophy: the ex-Junghans area regeneration in Giudecca (1996-2002), where the building D became widely copied; the Lavazza Campus in Turin (2010-2018), a LEED Platinum urban regeneration; the Cascina Merlata masterplan in Milan (2011-2021) with stepped towers; the L'Ark office building in Bordeaux (2017-2023) with a concave facade; and the "Augmented Architecture" installation for MAPEI at FuoriSalone 2021, a stretched replica of the portico of Milan's ex-Ospedale Maggiore. Zucchi describes the contemporary architect as a DJ, mixing fragments from Moneo, Ponti, Portaluppi, Caccia Dominioni, and Johanna Gullichsen. His facade theory, called "sfalsino" (offset), derives from Rafael Moneo's Murcia town hall.