DESIGN CONVERGE: Please briefly describe your attitude towards the occupation.

Alessandro Pepe: I think that in the last 50 years, consequently to the increasing education level, the western society’s individuals have lost a fundamental part of the human life which is mysticism.
The constantly augmenting young cultivated adults nowadays are not convinced by traditional religions, and don’t have any substantial alternative to address a significance of life.
For this reason I think that it is quite a consequent answer that the significance of our life is what we do: the good we do to the other people, our familiars and friends, and broadly to our sphere of interference.
For architects there is a supplementary potential goal of life, because what we do is material. Is something that we touch and see, it is usually quite big and it is therefore easy address it as a scope or a result.
Consequently to this thought, I consider architecture, as the result of what I will have done during my life.

 
DESIGN CONVERGE: What is your design concept? What do you think “good design” stand for?

Alessandro Pepe: I think that the clients require from the architect a compensation for the needs that the average user can’t have satisfied in his life. A lot of my clients ask me to introduce in their house the vegetation that is missing in their cities, and the warmth that is missing in their relations. However I think that Architecture should last longer than its creators, therefore its significance should be broader than our contemporary incidental needs. Beauty is the resume of all the needs and the language of beauty is proportion. So for me good design stands for proportion.

 
DESIGN CONVERGE: Many people say that architects can create value, please talk about the value of design?
 
Alessandro Pepe: Customers are available to spend almost all they have to buy what corresponds to their dreams. Architects are exactly there for give form to the dreams of their clients. Moreover, when the built product is excellent, and the years, or a good marketing make it famous, then it’s commercial price rises far from its building cost. Quality of design is the key of its value.

 
DESIGN CONVERGE: What are the important factors when a project impress the public?
 
Alessandro Pepe: I think that like me, all the public of architecture likes to have their intelligence stimulated. Usually it happens trough beauty, but the stimulation can also be triggered by functionality, or other more circumstantial features of the project. On the other hand marketing and photography are also very relevant, even if they are not directly influential to the quality of the project.

 
DESIGN CONVERGE: What kind of qualifications do you think a good designer should have?
 
Alessandro Pepe: Italian Architecture Universities are very theoretical. While studying at Politecnico di Torino, I thought that the relevance given to the physics of structures was excessive and that the lack of a strong hand drawing course was dangerous for my education. The Faculdade de Arquitetura do Porto is the opposite, it is very practical: a lot of hand drawing and construction details. The Portuguese architecture contemporary environment is more influential than the Italian one, so I would sustain the opinion that a more practical education is more effective.

 
DESIGN CONVERGEDESIGN CONVERGE:: What is your opinion toward the trend of the architecture?
 
Alessandro Pepe: I am very positive: the world that I know is surely improving in that sense: the average customer is getting more cultivated an sensible, so for designers it is easier to make our ideas to be welcomed.