Openfabric

Openfabric is a Landscape Architecture and Urban planning practice based in Rotterdam (the Netherlands) and Milan (Italy).
Responding to the large variety of possibilities that the intersection of city, society and nature creates, our projects cover several fields of action. They range from urban installations through public space design, to large landscape strategic plans; waterfronts, campuses, squares, streetscapes, parks, and playgrounds.
We cover the many facets of public realm processes with our experience and by involving in our team, for each project, specialists from other fields of expertise.

Openfabric is led by:
Francesco Garofalo [Founder]
Jacopo Gennari Feslikenian [Team manager, Rotterdam]
Matteo Motti [Team manager, Milan]

WE BELIEVE

Spontaneous colonisation |
The main interest of the office started in the City. Focusing on the complex dynamics and interactions that are part of urban open spaces, our goal is to generate spaces where the city, society and nature come together, addressing spontaneity rather than over-imposing rigid design and planning solutions.

Optimistic Resilience |
We believe in an optimistic vision of resilience – changes to adapt to do not only have to be traumatic and negative. Once emancipated, the understanding of the term of resilience as not exclusively the management of threats and dangers, it can become a key to interpret urban dynamics – an instrument for addressing current and future urban changes that is to the benefit of cities and people.

Beyond the City |
Our interest expanded towards the urban-rural condition. Amongst other services, food production in many cases is located in distant landscapes; gastronomy, for instance, can be key to reestablish a link between food, cuisine, agri-production, people and places, bridging usually disconnected territories. Understanding the relations between territories in terms of these systems of dependencies is critical, in our opinion, to generating responsible plans and strategies that can take in account complex dynamics of cause and effects.