co+labo radović   exchange students from PoliMi completed their studies at co+labo  

Silvia Spallina and Salvatore Nastasi, students from Politecnico di Milano who have joined co+labo at the beginning of 2015, completed their studies at Keio University. They followed the steps of our first exchange students, Antonella Colistra and Sasamura Yoshiro, and gave an excellent contribution to our efforts to further internationalise and advance the level of studies of architecture and urban design at co+labo. In autumn the strategic partnership between Keio-PoliMi will be elevated to include Double Degree studies, when co+labo Suzuki Akitaka joins ABC programme at Lecco.
During their time at Keio, Salvatore and Silvia were involved in a number of co+labo activities, including SD design Studio Radović, design and research projects, Tokyo dérive with University of Canberra, and research trip to the Barn House, at Memu Meadows. Their hard work and positive energy will be fondly remembered and - they stay co+labo. 

Images from the co+labo Minami Sanriku Bridge Competition entry, the quality of which was a result of Silvia's, Salvatore's and Magome Aymu's excellent work. 

co+labo radović   co+labo fieldwork at the Barn House in LIXIL's Memu Meadows Centre 

In the period 12-15 July, a co+labo team, Sato Yuta, Miyagaki Tomotake, Ito Conan, Yamamori Hisamu, Silvia Spallina and Salvatore Nastasi (exchange students from Politecnico di Milano), has conducted regular research and maintenance work at the Barn House and collected additional information which should help co+labo pursue the ambition embedded in the competition-winning scheme - development of the concept of non-finito. The House was conceived as a “learning space”, open to evolving knowledge and gradual, incremental changes aimed at perpetual improvement – in response to both external environmental conditions and patterns of cohabitation between humans and horses. Ideally, it will be never completed. If properly used, it will live. Life will make it change, evolve and graciously age.

co+labo Barn House at Memu Meadows was produced as an intentional critique, in an effort to make that space speak in favour of combined environmental and cultural responsibility. The key message was that sustainability cannot be reduced to technological solutions, that there always is much more to it. The Barn House asks us to think about the totality of place, and thus the totality of architecture - and not, and never, only about simply energy efficient building.