Marco Mario Paolo Casagrande (born 7 May 1971) is a Finnish architect, environmental artist, architectural theorist, former mercenary, writer and professor of architecture. He graduated from Helsinki University of Technology department of architecture (2001). Casagrande has been identified as an anarchist architect.
Early life Casagrande was born in Turku, Finland, to a well-off Italian-Finnish Catholic family. He spent his childhood in Ylitornio in Finnish Lapland, but went to school in Karis, a southern Finland small town, before moving to Helsinki to study architecture.
Mercenary and writer
Casagrande claimed that he volunteered for the Bosnian Croat Defence Forces HVO in 1993 after his service in the Finnish Army. He wrote under the pen name Luca Moconesi a controversial book Mostarin tien liftarit / Hitchhikers on the Road to Mostar (WSOY 1997)The mind of a fanatic - Helsingin Sanomat, 18 September 2001 about his alleged experiences in the Bosnian Civil War, and based on descriptions of war crimes committed by the main character in the autobiographical book, he came under suspicion as a possible war criminal. The war crimes listed in the book include the murder of a civilian woman in her home, and plotting to destroy a dam to flood a village with civilian inhabitants. After coming under suspicion he claimed that the book was in fact a work of fiction.
Later Casagrande has expressed views condemning war crimes from a military perspective: "Those troops know that they are doing wrong. This is the very opposite of constructive collectivity and group spirit. Anybody can understand that it is by no measures militarily efficient to go kicking the doors of old people's home." Casagrande has been lecturing in the National Defence University of Finland since 2006 on courses of strategy and leadership.Anttalainen & Vasaramäki, Casagrande (KALPA, Maanpuolustuskorkeakoulu, 2011), 38-41.
Architect and artist
From the early stages of his career Casagrande started to mix architecture with other disciplines of art and science landing with a series of ecologically conscious architectural installations around the world.Architektur zwischen Landart und Konzeptkunst - Hochschule Munchen 6/2011 After being a finalist in the UK journal Architectural Reviews Emerging Architecture competition (1999) Marco Casagrande and his then partner Sami Rintala were invited to the Venice Biennial 2000. The New York Times reporter chose their project "60 Minute Man" as his personal favorite in the Biennale. - Adam Mornament: When Attitude Becomes Form Contemporary -magazine 2003 In the project Casagrande & Rintala had planted on oak forest in an abandoned barge on top of 60 minutes worth of composted human waste produced by the city of Venice. Casagrande's cross-over architectural work encompasses the realms of architecture, urban and environmental planning, environmental art, circuses and other artistic disciplines. - Thurrock: A Visionary Brief in the Thames Gateway General Public Agency 2004
In search for subconscious architecture, real reality and connection between the modern man and nature. He believes that one shall not be blindfolded by stress, the surroundings of economics, the online access to entertainment or information. What is real is valuable. - Berkeley Prize Committee and Jury University of California, Berkeley 2007
Casagrande's works and teaching are in-between architecture, urban and environmental design and science, environmental art and circus. There is no other reality than nature.
Casagrande was nominated as the professor of ecological urban planning in the Taiwan based Tamkang University after the Treasure Hill project, in which Casagrande changed an illegal settlement of urban farmers into an experimental laboratory of environmental urbanism. - Atelier 3: Treasure Hill 10/2003 The overhaul had mixed reactions from the community. In 2017, he was invited-professor at the ENSAV : École Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture de Versailles.
Marco Casagrande is the laureate of the European Prize for Architecture 2013, - The European Prize for Architecture 2013 European Centre for Architecture, 2013 CICA Award of the International Committee of Architectural Critics for conceptual and artistic architecture - Premios Bienal de Arquitectura y CICA, Buenos Aires International Biennial for Architecture 10/2013 and UNESCO & Locus Foundation's Global Award for Sustainable Architecture 2015. - LES LAURÉATS DU GLOBAL AWARD 2015 AMC, 2015
Third generation city
Casagrande views cities as complex energy organisms in which different overlapping layers of energy flows are determining the actions of the citizens as well as the development of the city. By mixing environmentalism and urban design Casagrande is developing methods of punctual manipulation of the urban energy flows in order to create an ecologically sustainable urban development towards the so-called 3rd Generation City (post industrial city).INTERVIEW WITH M. CASAGRANDE ON URBAN ACUPUNTURE - Laurits Elkjær, Bergen School of Architecture 4/2010
Casagrande utilized the tenets of acupuncture: treat the points of blockage and let relief ripple throughout the body. More immediate and sensitive to community needs than traditional institutional forms of large scale urban renewal interventions would not only respond to localized needs, but do so with a knowledge of how citywide systems operated and converged at that single node. Release pressure at strategic points, release pressure for the whole city.Urban Acupuncture - Urban Applications - Community + Design Placemaking 2013
The theory of the Third Generation City views the post industrial urban condition as a machine ruined by nature including human nature and architects as design shamans merely interpreting what the bigger nature of the shared mind is transmitting. - Marco Casagrande: Cross-over Architecture and the Third Generation City Epifanio 9 2008 This organic machine is kept alive through continuous and spontaneous ruining processes performed by citizens, to whom Casagrande refers to as 「anarchist gardeners」 by means of urban farming,The Community Gardens of Taipei - P2P Foundation 2010 illegal architecture - Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan, Architizer 2011 and urban acupuncture.Anarchist Gardener Issue One 安那其建築園丁 – Nikita Wu: Anarchist Gardener 2010 The element of Ruin is viewed as something man-made having become part of nature.Chen House by C-Laboratory - Dezeen 2009 The theory is developed in the independent multidisciplinary research centre Ruin Academy (2010-).Ruin Academy - Landezine 2010
Third Generation City follows the first generation where humans peacefully coexisted with nature and the second generation built walls and stone structures everywhere in an attempt to shut out nature. In the third generation however, nature, which can never be truly shut out, grows back through the ruins, through the cracks in the wall, sucking human nature back into the wider nature. Third Generation City concentrates on local knowledge and urban acupuncture rather than on centrally governed urban planning.Returning Humans to Nature and Reality - Nick Couson, eRenlai 2011 Casagrande describes urban acupuncture as: [a] cross-over architectural manipulation of the collective sensuous intellect of a city. City is viewed as multi-dimensional sensitive energy-organism, a living environment. Urban acupuncture aims into a touch with this nature.Urban Acupuncture: Revivifying Our Cities Through Targeted Renewal - Kyle Miller MSIS 9/2011 and Sensitivity to understand the energy flows of the collective chi beneath the visual city and reacting on the hot-spots of this chi. Architecture is in the position to produce the acupuncture needles for the urban chi.Ruin Academy - Marco Casagrande Epifanio 14 2011 and A weed will root into the smallest crack in the asphalt and eventually break the city. Urban acupuncture is the weed and the acupuncture point is the crack. The possibility of the impact is total, connecting human nature as part of nature. The theory opens the door for uncontrolled creativity and freedom. Each citizen is enabled to join the creative process, feel free to use city space for any purpose and develop his environment according to his will.Compost City - Guoda Bardauskait p. 30-31, Sustainable Urban Design Journal 1 2011 The agents of the Third Generation City are sensitive citizens who feel the calling of a sustainable co-operation with the rest of the nature, sensitive citizen who are aware of the destruction that the insensitive modern machine is causing to nature including human nature.An alternative learning platform: Ruin Academy – Anarchist Gardener - Mizah Rahman, Asian Urban Epicenters 2012 Urban acupuncture produces small-scale but socially catalytic interventions into the urban fabric.Ruin Academy - Casagrande Lab - Ariane Lourie Harrison, Architectural Theories of the Environment: Posthuman TerritoryRoutledge, 2013
The relationship between architectural design and organic knowledge involves a separation of roles. While architects and designers do not naturally inherit or preserve collective cultural memory, their professional training allows them to interpret and negotiate these traditional insights. But conflicts car arise if an architect try to claim copyright over fragments of localized knowledge, prioritizing individual intellectual property over communal ownership. Instead of imposing rigid design structures, professionals can establish open platforms that allow organic knowledge to surface and develop its own forms. Formal design is not always required as organic knowledge functions as a direction reflection of realities. Change from organic city - M. Casagrande, International Society of Biourbanism 2013
Casagrande's works have been selected three times to the Venice Architecture Biennale; years 2000, 2004 and 2006. - World Architecture Community
Collaboration with Rintala
Casagrande & Rintala - Marco Casagrande and Sami Rintala - is a Finnish architect and artist group producing architectonic installations 1998–2003 for international venues of contemporary architecture and art. Their works move between architecture and environmental art. - World Architecture Community Contemporary -magazine 2003
For their landscape installation 1000 White Flags (summer 2002), for example, the artists speckled a downhill-skiing range in Koli Nature Park, Finland, with flags made of used sheets from mental hospitals. Casagrande & Rintala here drew attention to the madness of businessmen who cut down ancient forests. - Biennale de Montreal: Casagrande & Rintala (Finland) 2002
Casagrande & Rintala's work Land(e)scape was awarded in the Architectural Reviews Emerging Architecture Award 1999 competition and chosen for the Venice Biennale 2000. New York Times architecture critic Herbert Muschamp chose their project 60 Minute Man his personal favourite of the biennale. - The New York Times 2000
Casagrande & Rintala design and build all their works by themselves. The design process continued during the construction work. "The work itself usually changes its shape or obtains more layers during the construction process. We keep ourselves open to changes in the work. When it is finding its shape it usually starts to tell us more about itself." - ARCH'IT: Casagrande & Rintala 2001
Important works
Land(e)scapeLand(e)scape (1999), an architectural installation by Finnish architects Casagrande & Rintala, with Marco Casagrande and Sami Rintala, in a former field in Savonlinna. The work is commenting on the desertion process of the Finnish countryside.