Felipe Zene Motta

ABout FELIPE

Felipe Zene Motta is an architect with a Master’s in Advanced Architectural Design with concentration in Urbanism, Landscape, and Ecology from the California College of the Arts. In the past 10 years, Felipe has played significant roles in the design of collective spaces in different scales, such as exhibitions, institutional buildings, and urban plans. During the Spring of 2016, has worked in San Francisco as a designer, researcher, curator, and fabricator, leading the project of an exhibition on affordability, equity, and housing. Felipe joined Isay Weinfeld´s team in 2016 and has been working since then on the concept design of several international projects. Also, Felipe leads his own practice, Estúdio Zene, which gained national relevance in Brazil after winning the design competition of the Kiss Nightclub Victims Memorial.

What did you do before you came to CCA? Why did you decide to study Urban Works?

I got my undergraduate degree in architecture at the Architecture and Urbanism College of São Paulo University. After that, I started working for Brasil Arquitetura Studio, one of the most recognized Brazilian offices. I decided to join the Urban Works program because I wanted to be prepared to conduct independent and innovative research and to form an experimental design thinking to actively and provocatively engage urban issues.

Can you describe your time at CCA? What were some of the projects you did or were involved in that meant the most to you, and what did you learn from your time here?

What I found most interesting during my time at CCA was the feeling of being challenged constantly in order to push forward my research, design thinking, and representation methods. I found it amazing to create a video animation to understand how infrastructure shapes territory or to build a sandbox physical model to visualize the water flow impact on land over time.

Peripheral Centers

Water as a tool to create community in suburbia.

Peripheral Centers

The design aims to use the dynamic surrounding water system of the Delta to bring people together, instead of separating them.

Horizontalism

Delamination of Lombard Street and creation of a longitudinal public axis that connects transversal housing bars over the existing city (Horizontalism Studio).

Active Urbanism

Development of a sharing mechanism built around food consumption to develop the community, business, and infrastructure of the Dogpatch District.

Kiss Nightclub Victims Memorial, 2018

The Memorial is designed to honor the 242 students who lost their lives in one of the saddest events in recent Brazilian history. It will be built at the same site where the nightclub caught fire in 2013.

Kiss Nightclub Victims Memorial, 2018

The proposal was the winner entry of a national design competition, among 120 submissions from all over the country. The construction is planned to start in 2022.

Kiss Nightclub Victims Memorial, 2018

The Memorial will resignify the place of the tragedy in a space of respect for the past, comfort for the present, and hope for the future. Through the collective appropriation of space, it is proposed to transform the existing perspective linked to the trauma into a space of education, exchange, and free interaction.

Floating Sphere House, 2020.

Speculative design for an isolated home for one person, in the context of the COVID pandemic social isolation.

What kind of work have you done since you graduated? How has your education and experience at CCA related to that work?

After I graduated I moved back to Brazil and started working as a concept designer at Isay Weinfeld office, an award-winning studio with a diverse background and international presence. Also, I started my own practice, where I´ve got the chance to independently develop my research and projects, using the knowledge and abilities gained at CCA but applied to Brazilian conditions.