BEYOND THE PROJECT: OUR RETREAT AT GIROTONDO HORIZON

At the beginning of February, our team chose to carve out a protected space, at Girotondo Horizon Retreat, to think more clearly, listen more attentively, and reflect on how we work and where we are heading. It was intentional time — almost a necessary one — a moment in which ideas were allowed to settle, intertwine and cross-pollinate.

A true experience of vision brewing: as in a process of fermentation, insights began to sediment, clarify and take on a more conscious form. Not away from the project, but deeper within it.

The Words That Define Us

We began with a simple yet powerful exercise: sharing a key word that felt personally and/or professionally meaningful.

In listening to one another, we built a shared map shaped by trust, attentiveness, vision, responsibility and care. It was a genuine moment of food for thought — intellectual and human nourishment that strengthened our collective identity. Placing these words side by side was like tracing an invisible grid capable of holding together our plural identity. Before designing spaces, we design meaning.

STRATEGY COOKING

We then devoted two hours to preparing lunch together, with a menu shaped by each person’s passions, skills and origins: handmade tagliatelle with mushrooms, pies, braised artichokes, and a wonderful torta caprese.

It was a truly enjoyable convivial moment, as well as a concrete exercise in strategy cooking: spontaneous coordination, distribution of roles, time management, and collaboration without rigid hierarchies — an organisation naturally horizontal in nature. In the kitchen, as in design, quality arises from the balance between autonomy and cooperation.

Communication and Trust

A team game centred on communication. We experienced how essential it is to truly listen, to read the context, and to articulate clear messages. The success of the activity — later shared around the same table — lay not only in achieving the objective, but in demonstrating that strategy is built through action, transparency and dialogue.

Shifting Perspective

After lunch, we walked through the snow to the astronomical observatory. A simple gesture that widened our perspective. Every project requires this dual tension: concentration on detail and capacity for vision.

It became a symbolic moment of vision brewing in the open air — observing from a distance what we construct daily at close range.

Reviewing and Redesigning

The day concluded with one of its most significant moments: a clear and shared reflection on the year just passed, and the opening of a new trajectory for what lies ahead. We revisited 2025 not only through outcomes and figures, but through the choices, relationships and challenges that shaped us.

From there, we introduced the guidelines for 2026, outlining objectives, strategic directions and the studio’s rebranding process — an evolution conceived not as a rupture, but as a conscious consolidation of who we are and who we aim to become.

It was an open space for dialogue, animated by questions, ideas, impressions and critical reflections.

For us, horizontal governance is daily practice. Transparency is method. Strategic thinking is shared responsibility.