About Communal Matters
A research agency for situated inquiry and collective spatial practice, it grows through fieldwork, conversations and acts of making — operating between the visible and the submerged, between infrastructures and lived experience. We understand space not as a neutral backdrop, but as a terrain continuously produced through material conditions, ecological systems and governance structures.
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Neither archive nor institution, Communal Matters unfolds as a porous field: an ongoing experiment in how communities — human and more-than-human — are shaped by the environments they inhabit and imagine, and how they, in turn, reshape them.
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Working across architecture, radical pedagogies, curatorial practice and public programmes, the agency develops formats that engage climate change, territorial transformation and the politics of the commons.
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Communal Matters does not seek to stabilise meaning. It creates the conditions for shared negotiation.
Alessandro Giovanni Gatti
Alessandro Giovanni Gatti is an architect working across architecture, design and research, exploring the social and cultural dimensions of space in contexts of transformation and crisis.
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Educated at Politecnico di Milano and Accademia Adrianea, he has collaborated with Atelier Biagetti, Scandurra Studio and Patricia Urquiola, and currently works with UNA/UNLESS between Venice and Milan. His practice ranges from cultural projects that introduce radical thinking within historical architectures to research on extreme environments and planetary fragility.
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In 2017, he founded Gi/Ga Workshop, a platform for collective reflection on the social role of architecture. His ongoing investigation into the legacy of Olivetti in Ivrea — including a workshop developed in collaboration with Harvard GSD — traces how architectures of care and production can inform new forms of coexistence.
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Within Communal Matters, Alessandro explores how architectural thinking can cultivate collective agency and reimagine spatial care.
Trained as an architect, Riccardo Rizzetto’s practice pivots around the reterritorialisation of the obsolete. Working across research, architecture and art, he traces the frictions between matter and meaning, landscape and infrastructure, image and system.
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He studied at IUAV University of Venice and the Royal College of Art, and recently completed an MA in Research Architecture at the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths, University of London.
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Alongside leading Riccardo Rizzetto Studio, he has developed art installations and spatial interventions for organisations including Sea Shepherd Italia and TEDx Bassano del Grappa, and has worked as a Research Assistant at Forensic Architecture.
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His work often begins from what appears marginal in order to reveal how environments think and remember, and how material culture reflects broader ecological and political dynamics.
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Within Communal Matters, Riccardo approaches spatial and material gestures as tools for collective reflection and critical imagination.