Studio Nemesi: The Courageous Architects of Italy

Luigi Prestinenza Puglisi profiles Studio Nemesi, founded by Michele Molè and Claudia Clemente in Rome in the late 1990s. Their early work, the Duke's restaurant in Parioli (1999), broke from postmodernism toward a West Coast-inspired deconstructivism influenced by Tom Mayne and Morphosis. Their breakthrough was the Church of Santa Maria della Presentazione (1997-2002) in Quartaccio, a light, powerful structure with a thin canopy and sequential spaces, reminiscent of Jean Nouvel's Lucerne Congress Center. The church marked a hopeful turn for Roman architecture, though a local resident mistook the architects for environmentalists and demanded its demolition. In 2000, the studio split: Molè kept the Nemesi name, while Clemente partnered with Francesco Isidori to form Labics. Nemesi later won the 2013 competition for the Italy Pavilion at Expo 2015 in Milan, beating 68 competitors. The pavilion's complex, tangled system of prefabricated panels—each unique—used CNC machines to achieve variety over repetition, a rare experiment in Italian construction. Despite criticism, Puglisi defends the project as a courageous, risky departure from safe design. Nemesi continues to collaborate with Morphosis and operates with Susanna Tradati. Puglisi argues that Italy lacks architects willing to take risks, and Nemesi deserves admiration for their obsessive, excellent work.