Even during his studies at the Politecnico di Milano, Milanese-born Valerio Maria Ferrari expanded his design horizons, from architecture and set design for theatre, to artistic installations. His multidisciplinary experiences were not sporadic incursions across fields, but the opening of parallel roads within the world of design. His firm VMCF ATELIER-Virtual Machine Concept Facilities arose in 2003 as a result of the multi-faceted professional biography that sets him apart.
For several years Ferrari worked as an assistant to Piero Faggioni on the set design and direction of operas in international theatres, including La Scala in Milan, the Palais Garnier in Paris, Covent Garden in London and the Metropolitan Opera in New York. He held seminars on Aesthetics within the Faculty of Architecture at the Politecnico di Milano and, between 1990 and 1993, worked with painter and architect Roberto Sebastian Matta (1911-2002).
His interest in artistic systems in theatre, music and art distinguish his work as an architect and converge in his global Visual Music Facilities Theatre project. This is a new concept of opera and musical theatre that Ferrari has been working on for years (as a constant “work in progress”), finding an important source of inspiration in the evolution of new technologies. The Visual Music Facilities Theatre is a new kind of theatre that can be replicated in various situations and is currently being considered for construction. In 2011 an important article by David Verdier about this new typology was featured in the Swiss magazine Dissonance (113-03-2011), and in April 2012 the project was published in a book by Victoria Newhouse called “Site and sound”, Monicelli, NY,US as an example of a theatre of the future.
In June 2011 his interior design project for a duplex apartment in Paris scored the cover of the prestigious international magazine Interior Design (USA).
In 2011 Valerio Maria Ferrari began working as an architect in Chongqing, China – a city with a population of around 36 million. First he was appointed as director of the international department in the architectural firm Yuandao and in 2013 became a partner in Xiangbei Li's firm, Huazhu.
Projects underway in China (Chongqing) include the JingLi Hotel – a 5-star hotel with a total surface area of 70,000 m2 and Ertang Nanbin Lu, a park devoted to art (with museums, galleries, schools, etc) measuring sqm 72.018 of which sqm .50.970 will be covered areas.
Cinzia Mazzone
Graduated from the Politecnico di Milano with a degree in Architecture. Her interdisciplinary thesis on the concept of representation in architecture saw the collaboration of Professor Carlo Sini, a lecturer of theoretical philosophy at the University of Milan. In 2001, she enrolled at École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) (School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences) in Paris, where she attended a course of study with Professor E. Michaud, a lecturer of art theory and ideology, and began to focus on the relationship between architecture, philosophy and art. At the same time, she collaborated with Professor Luigi Cocchiarella on the integrated course in Representation held at the Faculty of Architecture of the Politecnico di Milano. In 2007-08, she worked with architect Silvia Dainese on summer design workshops run by the Università IUAV di Venezia. In 2007, together with Valerio Ferrari, Jean Paul Robert and Brigitte Mestro, she founded the art and architecture magazine D'Ici¬là. In 2009-10, she collaborated in drawing courses run by Professor Gabriele Pierluisi at the Faculty of Design of the Politecnico di Milano. She is an associate of the studio VMCF Atelier, established by architect Valerio Maria Ferrari.
