Luigi Rosselli

Luigi Rosselli is an Italian born[1] architect who practices in Australia. He was born in Milan in 1957.[2] Coming from a long line of engineers,[3] he studied architecture at the Ecole Politechnique Federale in Lausanne, where he met Alvaro Siza and Mario Botta, who offered Rosselli a job in 1979.[2] He left the next year to work for Mitchell/Giurgola in their New York office at the age of 23.[4] That firm won a commission to design the Australian Parliament House, and Rosselli moved to Canberra in 1981 to work on that project.[2] He met his wife there, and the two of them moved to Sydney in 1984.[2] A year later he joined Furio Valich's firm, then opened his practice a year later. When he founded his Sydney practice in 1985, he developed a ritual of showing his freehand design concept sketches using black felt pens and white Tipp Ex (correcting fluid) on translucent yellow tracing paper, torn from small rolls.[5]

In 1989, two musicians from INXS contacted him to design their houses. One was a bush house on the Hawkesbury River, the other was an addition to a 1930s brick duplex. They were published in 1191 in Vogue Living and Architect Australia.[6]

His work has primarily been residential, but in the 1990s he worked on a series of restaurants.[2] His approach to architecture is "humanist, where people and environment take precedence over preconceived design dogmas"[7] and his main concern is designing for the humans: for their daily lives, for the human senses, for the psychology of the users, to create a sense of comfort and satisfaction and aiming for the "Architecture of Happiness"[8]

Timeline of Luigi Rosselli's designs from 1990-2012

Family homes like The Books House, which is a series of stacked terrace platforms following the steep sandstone topography of Sydney's northern shore. Or the five-bedroom Curraghbeena House that languors along the serpentine shoreline of Mosman Bay and sold at auction in 2016 for a reported $12 million.[9] To this end, many of the projects exhibit a seamless transition between old and new, achieving balance so the outcome is simply a better version of what it once was.[10]

The Great Wall of WA[11] an ambitious structure featuring 12 musterers' quarters built into a sand dune in the Pilbara region,[12] won several awards such as the Terra Awards i[13] Architizer A+ Awards[14] & Archdaily Building of the Year.[15]

In 2004, a house he designed in Mosman won a commendation from the Royal Australian Institute of Architects (AIA),[16] and in 2006, he shared the AIA's NSW Wilkinson residential award for a farmhouse in Mount Minderoo, near Mittagong.[17][18]

The Luigi Rosselli Architects team work out of The Beehive[19] Design Studio in the Sydney suburb of Surry Hills.[20] Its honeycomb facade was a joint effort with his architect son Raffaello Rosselli, who is also interested in sustainability and re-use.[21][22] Luigi Rosselli Architects is a carbon neutral practice applying sustainable building practises, as demonstrated by their expertise in rammed earth, air-conditioning-free spaces and energy efficiency.[20]

Other award winning projects include, the Triplex Apartments,[23] Homage to Oscar,[24][25][26] Heritage Treasure Chest[27]

In 2015, Luigi Rosselli published a compilation of his hand drawn designs. Titled 'A Perspective: 30-year of Sketches by Luigi Rosselli Architect', the exhibition features more than 1,000 of Rosselli's translucent yellow illustrations as a veil of 'windswept leaves' layered through a sculpted and internally lit portal that visitors may walk through.[5]