RENATO D'ETTORRE ARCHITECTS

Italian born Australian Renato d'Ettorre is a unique and seminal architect of our time whose work is deeply intuitive, mystical and sensual, entrenched as it is in a diligent study of five thousand years of architectural history and emanating from a passionate desire to produce buildings that work in full synergy and sympathy with their environment.

D'Ettorre graduated from Sydney University of Technology. Soon after, he returned to his native Italy tio work with Pier Luigi Nervi and Paulo Poroghesi in Rome . On his return to Australia, he joined the practices of Harry Seidler and Romaldo Giurgola before setting up on his own in 1994.

D'Ettorre's architecture cannot be pigeonholed. It is the classic antidote to any kind of formalism. Each project develops both meditatively and intuitively but also out of an almost Beethovenian visiting, revisiting and organic development of a theme, motif or idea. This depth process bequeaths the buildings with a kind of timeless and mystical quality which stems both from a huge storehouse of architectural knowledge and a process of profound thinking and calculated recourse to experience and intuition

The upshot is fabulous, strong buildings of immense beauty and gravitas. That notwithstanding, d'Ettorre's creations are also incredibly stylish, chic and consumately Italian in their sensibilities. But there's also this all-permeating sense of mystical sanctuary that is perhaps most characterizes d'Ettorre's output: it is the stuff of dreams. The spaces are like beautiful wombs for the modern soul: graciously serene, rich and sultry, functioning as splendid repositories as antidotes to the stress and dysfunction of the modern world. Although transplanted from Down Under, d'Ettorre's buildings retain that quintessential essence of artful Mediterranean living in the most meaningful sense of the term and, as such, they are ideal for transplantation into a Cypriot milieu.