Andrea D’Antrassi is a registered architect in Italy and Switzerland, and received his Master’s Degree in Architecture from Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio, Switzerland. He joined MAD in 2010. Andrea is responsible for managing MAD's practice in Europe and the Middle East, as well as overseeing the overall operations of the Rome office. With solid experiences gained from overseas projects in US, Italy, Australia and China, he adds a valuable global vision to MAD. Andrea has been involved with Roma 71 Via Boncompagni, Huangshan Mountain Village, Nanjing Zendai Himalayas Center, and FENIX Museum of Migration in Rotterdam.

Rome Office

Amazing Walk is an immersive installation for Milan Design Week 2024, created in collaboration with Amazon and INTERNI. Located in the historic Cortile della Farmacia at the University of Milan, the installation explores the relationship between architecture and nature through form, material, and light.

Standing 7.5 meters tall, the structure is made of hundreds of triangular aluminum components and is built without internal columns. Its mountain-like form encourages exploration and interaction, offering a space that feels both grounded and surreal.

A semi-reflective, transparent membrane covers the pavilion, allowing light and the surrounding architecture to pass through while providing a sense of shelter. By day, the surface reflects light and movement; by night, integrated lighting and mist soften the structure’s edges, creating a floating effect.

Built with sustainable materials, Amazing Walk shifts in appearance throughout the day and is further enhanced by virtual reality elements that add an interactive digital layer.

The installation invites visitors to pause, connect, and reimagine the boundary between the natural and built environment.



Milan, Italy

Installation 

Amazing Walk

The Conrad Hotel in Beijing introduces an alternative approach to high-rise architecture in the city’s dense central business district. Located at a major intersection along East 3rd Ring Road, the hotel challenges the rigidity of the surrounding urban fabric with a form that moves fluidly through the skyline.

The facade features a continuous, sculpted surface that responds to the internal grid and shifts in rhythm as it rises. The curving geometry brings a sense of softness and organic motion to an area defined by efficiency and repetition. Positioned next to Tuanjiehu Park, one of the few green spaces in the district, the building functions as a transition between the natural landscape and the city’s built environment.

Our design envisions the structure as a form of “living architecture,” emerging from the rigid context like a plant growing through pavement. The design introduces movement, variation, and a sense of life into an otherwise uniform setting.

Inside, guest rooms feature curved walls and irregular window openings that shape the interiors into light-filled, protective spaces. These sculpted environments offer views of the city framed by softened geometry, creating a distinct spatial experience that contrasts with the exterior surroundings.


Beijing, China

Hospitality

Conrad Hotel

East 34th our vision for a new type of New York City high-rise one that blends architecture and nature. Located near the Empire State Building, the tower challenges the rigid, power-driven expression of traditional skyscrapers. Instead of a sharp, imposing crown, the building features a deep-tinted glass curtain wall that gradually transitions into a transparent, fluid cap, dissolving into the sky.

The design rises from the Manhattan grid like an organic form, with soft, undulating surfaces that oppose the stacked plates of industrial-era towers. It introduces a more human and ecological language to the city’s dense modernist skyline.

At ground level, a commercial podium combines retail and public amenities, anchored by a multi-story atrium and vertical green wall offering moments of nature in the urban environment. Inside, double-height communal areas and shared amenities foster social connection and a sense of community among residents. These spaces reimagine vertical living as an immersive experience in “urban nature.”

‘East 34th’ proposes a gentler, more integrated future for high-density development one that shifts away from dominance and instead explores softness, connection, and coexistence with the surrounding city and environment.


New York City, USA

Residential

EAST 34th NYC

Light is an installation for the 2021 Art at the FULIANG festival in Hanxi Village, Jingdezhen. Set among rolling tea fields in the Shiziyuan area, the work responds to the region’s natural and cultural landscape known for its black tea production and porcelain heritage.

The installation draws from the curves of the surrounding tea fields, translating them into a floating structure enveloped by a white membrane. Positioned at the highest point of the hill, it transforms a previously overlooked area into a visible and symbolic destination.

During the day, the structure appears as a floating white form above the fields. Depending on light and weather conditions, it shifts from opaque to translucent acting as a frame for the sky, fog, trees, and mountains. At night, internal lighting slowly transitions through four colors, echoing the village lights and creating a beacon-like presence in the landscape.

The installation includes a public platform beneath it, offering a space for rest, gatherings, and community use. By inviting visitors to climb the hill and engage with the scenery, Light reframes the relationship between people and nature.



Jingdezhen, China

Yang Xuebing, Cai Yixuan, Wang Ruipeng, Zhu Qingyu

RFR Building Design Consulting (Shanghai) Co., Ltd.

Shanghai Eagibang Construction Co., Ltd

Beijing Ning Field Lighting Design Corp., Ltd.

Tian FangFang

ART at FULIANG 2021

FULIANG DEVELOPMENT Co.,Ltd.

FULIANG CULTURE TOURISM GROUP

Beijing Hubart Culture Communication Co.,Ltd.

The Light

Cloud Center is a multi-purpose cultural venue for Aranya, a seaside arts community in Qinhuangdao, China. Located near the Beidaihe coastline, the building is conceived as a “floating cloud by the sea,” blending architecture with landscape and sky.

The structure houses a theater, exhibition hall, and press room within a flexible, open interior. Its cloud-like form is created through sweeping structural overhangs, with the largest extending 30 meters. These overhangs make the white mass appear to float above a transparent ground floor. A central core supports the structure, allowing for a column-free interior and adaptable event space.

The façade is made of hyperbolic white stained glass, giving the building a soft, reflective presence that changes with the light. Skylights bring natural light into the swirling ceiling of the main space, supporting both energy efficiency and the atmosphere.

A circular white stone garden surrounds the building, evoking a surreal, cosmic landscape. Pools and reflective surfaces blur the line between architecture and nature, creating a peaceful, otherworldly setting.



Aranya, China

Public

Aranya Cloud Center

The Thread Chair is a study in simplicity and artistry, crafted entirely from bound aluminum rods. Its organic form emerges naturally, with inadvertent bends and delicate curves creating a structure that feels both intricate and weightless like a web caught in a breeze. Slim, fluid, and dynamic, the chair transforms metal into an expressive sculptural piece, where material and design merge into a single poetic gesture.

Rome, Italy

Product

Thread Chair

A Village Under the Dome is our proposal for the Zhuhai Cultural Arts Center, situated on the former site of Yinkeng Village, a historic settlement dating back to the Northern Song Dynasty. Rather than replacing the demolished village with a typical large-scale civic complex, we reimagined the site as a protected cultural landscape preserving the original village layout and memories while introducing new functions.

Instead of erasing the site’s history, we organized the center’s programs into small-scale, village-like buildings that follow the original street network and topography. These structures are unified under a translucent dome that floats above the village ruins, acting as both shelter and symbol. The dome is supported by a cable-membrane structure, remaining open at its base to encourage access from all directions and blend with the sky like a soft mist.

Key elements of Yinkeng Village, including its ancient banyan tree, pond, and plazas, are preserved and re-integrated into the civic space. The design prioritizes community, memory, and emotional connection, advocating for urban renewal that respects history.

By merging old and new, A Village Under the Dome reflects a civic architecture rooted in cultural continuity and human experience, offering an alternative vision for development in rapidly urbanizing cities.



Zhuhai, China

Adaptive Reuse

Zhuhai Cultural Arts Center

MAD won a competition to lead the rebuilding of 71 Via Boncompagni in the heart of Rome in early 2010. After four years of design development and hearings, the project was approved by the Rome Planning, Programming and Implementation Department and the Rome City Council in 2014. The project will become MAD’s first realized project in Europe.

Built in the 1970s, the existing building is a commercial courtyard building attached to an early 20th-century chapel located on the street corner. The primary challenge posed by the competition stage was how to transform this incongruous modern building into a deluxe residential complex.

In modern buildings, beams, pillars, and floor slabs have replaced walls as the core elements of architectural structure. While freed from their structural obligations, facades remain canvases for expression and style. Instead of demolishing and reconstructing the entire building, MAD will simply remove the existing facades, retain the structural framework, and insert new living units to transform the building’s function. New balconies and gardens will emerge from the “gaps and voids” between new residential units and the original framework structure. The boundary between the building and the street blurs as the new design peels away bulky facades and replaces them with a more open, transparent scheme.

After realigning the existing structural system, the building will contain a “bookshelf” structure. 145 residential units of various sizes and layouts, ranging from studios to urban villas with facades made of custom metal and glass, will be intricately inserted into this 8-level concrete “bookshelf” system. The full-height curved glass windows shift and protrude in a controlled choreography between the floor slabs. The “voids” between the glass and the framework will be transformed into gardens and balconies, bringing natural elements and sunlight into the living areas.

Residents can see the interior courtyard through a hazy façade made of translucent metallic curtains. The existing modern garden will be transformed into an abstract one with a vast pond at the center that reflects the bordering trees and the sky above. Natural sunlight filters through voids in the pond and the surrounding garden, streaming through to the ramp of the underground garage below.

Contemporary living in a museum-like city like Rome is often hidden behind its historical facades. Through this adaptive rebuild project, this “open” building will be able to return vitality and urban living to the traditional neighborhood.

Mixed Use

Zhao Wei, Achille Tortini, Gustavo van Staveren, Giannantonio Bongiorno, Jei Kim, Elin Thorisdottir

Ing. Sergio Schisani

Studio Busnengo 

71 Via Boncompagni

Hutong Bubble 218 is the second small-scale intervention in Beijing’s historic neighborhoods. Located in Qianmen East, near the Forbidden City, the project restores and transforms a Qing Dynasty courtyard house as part of the Old City Renewal Research Program.

The site once housed Beijing’s first international hospital and later served as communal housing. Years of unregulated modifications led to severe structural decline and vacancy. We preserved the courtyard’s historic gray brick structure and restored original wooden elements while introducing futuristic sculptural additions called “bubbles.”

The mirrored bubbles, one connecting floors as a staircase and shared workspace, and another perched on the rooftop, contrast the old architecture while blending into the surroundings by reflecting sky, trees, and buildings. These surreal additions serve new functions while maintaining harmony with the courtyard’s original character.

“Hutong Bubble 218” continues MAD’s vision from Beijing 2050 a proposal to inject life into aging urban fabric through micro-scale architectural interventions. Rather than erase history, the design encourages coexistence between old and new, revitalizing neglected areas with fresh energy and community potential.


Hutong Bubble 218

Gu is MAD’s contemporary take on the traditional wooden armchair, inspired by the skeletal structure “gu” meaning “bones” in Chinese. The design features flowing, interconnected joints that resemble fibrous connective tissue, allowing each surface to transition seamlessly into the next.

The chair’s organic form blurs the line between structure and body, evoking the sense of a living organism rather than a static object. Its sculptural silhouette is accentuated by the strong directionality of the wood grain, which follows the chair’s smooth curves and enhances its fluid appearance.

Both natural and futuristic, Gu reflects Ma Yansong’s ongoing exploration of form, material, and human connection merging traditional craftsmanship with contemporary design language.


Andrea D'antrassi