Carmelo Zappulla

PhD architect and founding partner of Barcelona based External Reference Architects. He studied architecture at the Università degli Studi di Palermo, graduating with Honors and special mention, and holds a PhD (European Mention) with Honors from Universidad Politécnica de Catalunya, Barcelona.

Together with Nacho Toribio, Zappulla runs, External Reference Architects, a firm active in design and research in the fields of sensorial spaces, interior design, architecture, and landscape design.  He received “New Italian Blood” 1st prize as best Italian office under 36 (2010), with the International Award: 1st  Prize in EXHIBITOR Magazine’s 29th Annual Exhibit Design Awards competition (2014) and the 2nd Prize Europan 8.

He is currently  Faculty member at IAAC (Instituto de Arquitectura Avanzada de Catalunya) and teacher at IED (Istituto Europeo di Design), where he is also the director of the Master’s Degree program in Interior Design. He collaborates with different architectural schools and institutions, including Strathclyde University, WSA (The Welsh School of Architecture), the Department of Architecture at Cardiff University, Wales, Uk.

His work has been exhibited at the Biennale in Venice, during the 12th International Architecture Exhibition, at MAXXI, Rome, at Eme3, Barcelona, Europan 8, Oslo.

His publications include scientific articles published by Routledge and projects published in Future, Il Sole 24 ore, Blueprint, Materia, Frame, Dezeen, Domus, in the books Architect's notebook and Architectural process 2014 by Damdi Publishing co, among others.

"I consider architecture as the result of the interrelationship between its constituent parts: aesthetic, tectonics, social, environmental, cultural, and organizational. When the project is focused only on one or a few of these levels, this is when hollow formalisms are generated.

In my Phd thesis I demonstrate that patterns are able to facilitate the interaction and integration of these constituents.

The rise of computation in architecture has had the effect of diluting the natural thought process of the architect and I am interested in helping to fill that theoretical void in parametric design.

A methodology based on my belief that Complexity Theory could be the basis for interpreting old architecture and the tools for generating the new.

The Systemic Thinking has demonstrated how the ‘Mechanicist’ model has completely failed due to it has concentrated its own attention on the separation and regimentation of disciplines, without considering the relationships between components and their interconnectivity. In doing so, systemic design is twofold: structured and structuring phenomena. It offers a holistic worldview regarding the environment and its inner structure."

pattern, design, geometrical computation, urban informality, vernacular.