Casi di studio: 2.4 Hembert Penaranda, Officina Architetti, Genova

This work is dedicated, first of all, to students and graduates in architecture, in order to highlight some factors that, in recent years, have changed quite radically the design activity. Among the many existing ways of doing business connected with the architecture and design, the attention is focused on what grows in design agencies of small-medium size, dealing with problems of complexity "controllable" and which are a considerable part of the design production, but of which the architecture magazines are not concerned. Most of the project activity, therefore, remains in darkness and anonymity. The architecture that is the result of similar professional agencies now increasingly tends not to be recognizable as a "gesture", an intuition of the individual, but as a product of a variously assorted group whose leadership may vary depending on the stages of the design development, often having capacity of technological and organizational innovation. The examples analyzed illustrate the aspects mentioned above describing some case study projects and the operation of some small-medium size agencies.