C+S ARCHITECTS is the office co-founded by Carlo Cappai and Maria Alessandra Segantini in Venice, Italy in 1994. Since 2015 offices have moved to London, UK and Treviso, Italy.
The office is committed to a just and sustainable future. Their innovative and poetic approach to architecture is shaped by the idea of Future Heritage, a philosophy that they have applied to research, teaching and their practice, that develops an in-depth, historical and ecological research, where every design gesture reinvents the traces of the past through materially sensitive interventions that evoke memories and engage the senses, enhancing the specific identities of spaces and places and connecting communities with the environment. Against both the imitation of the past and the temptation of the spectacular, their design translates the contexts (TranslationArchitecture™) enabling a contemporary as well as continuous form of urban development that reinforce the identity of people and communities and their relationship with nature.
C+S ARCHITECTS is a critically acclaimed, international firm of architects, designers, and researchers, one of the industry’s leading international practitioners, having completed several award-winning projects, including the Law-Cort offices in Venice, winner of the Gold Medal of Italian Architecture 2012 Special Prize, the BIGMat National Award 2017 and presented at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2012, the housing towers in Milan and the Piazza of the Venice Cinema Festival, respectively nominee at the Mies van der Rohe Awards 2021 and 2023 and a series of school buildings, winner of the 2009 Challenge Award of the Italian Ministry of Education and the Environment, which granted the office an invitation to the 15th Venice Architecture Biennale, where the work was exhibited at the Corderie with the installation EDUcare, a work which broadly impacted the new codes to design school buildings in Italy, for which the office is internationally acclaimed and has recently been invited to present their work and research to the Ministry of Education in Egypt.
Drawing insights from the sensitive and fragile environment where C+S started their practice- Venice and its lagoon, their built projects derive their aesthetics from their close relationship with light, time and nature as well as the textures of crafted materiality to celebrate transformation, where each design intervention becomes a bridge between the built and the unbuilt and between tradition and innovation. Relevant to this approach and widely published are the landscape regeneration of 325 hectares of Sant'Erasmo island in the Venice lagoon, nominee of the Mies van der Rohe Award 2009 and the RIBA Awards 2009, the winning entries international competitions of the Panquin site in Tervuren, in Belgium, the contemporary art GAMeC Museum in Bergamo now in completion, the low-tech offices for Leiedal, winner of the Vlaams Baumeister Architect competition, the Harbor Brain Building in the Venice Arsenale, the first off-the-grid building in Venice where a layer of photovoltaic cells plays the texture of light of the Venice lagoon.
Their diverse, award-winning portfolio includes museums and cultural centres, public and private urban regeneration projects that connect citizens with ecology, high-rise towers, and public spaces that foster communities and enhance their sense of identity, such as the Piazza of the Venice Cinema Festival in the Lido of Venice, as well as installations that highlight the role of the designer in shaping the society, such as The Cord, entrance of the 50th Art Biennale and The Wave, for the opening of the 60th Venice Cinema Festival.
Honoured with more than 50 architecture and design Awards, C+S' work has been exhibited worldwide at the 15th Venice Architecture Biennale, at the Triennale in Milan, at Oslo National Museum, at the RIBA in London, at the MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA and at the Citè de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine in Paris, to quote the major.
Carlo and Maria Alessandra in 2024 received the lifetime registration in the Albo d’Oro of San Marino Republic. They were awarded the Italian Architect of the Year Award 2022 by the Italian Chamber of Architects in 2022.
Their academic career spans Europe and the United States. Carlo and Maria Alessandra have been Visiting Professor at MIT, Cambridge Massachusetts, USA (2012-2016), Professors of Practice at Syracuse University, New York, USA, and Visiting Professors at the University of Bath, UK leading Option Design Studios at the Master's Degrees. They served respectively as tenured Full Professor and Associate Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at the UEL (2013–2022), where they contributed to the United Kingdom’s national research assessment (REF 2013 and 2021). Maria Alessandra has been a tenured Full Professor at Hasselt University, where she co-chaired the Master’s Degree and contributed to write the Master's curriculum. Across these appointments, they developed interdisciplinary design methodologies integrating heritage, ecology, and design innovation within advanced research design studios.