NCB ARCHITETTURA is an architectural design studio, based in Milan and operating since 1998, founded by Riccardo Emanuele and Samuel Balasso. The studio follows the project on different scales, focusing with specific attention when dealing with hospitality and wellness, retail, housing and office planning.

The continuous dialogue with preexistence and the knowledge of local topic are the basic principles which the studio bases its work on. The project approach focuses on the valorization of the context, its landscape and its history, always conceiving them like a space-time continuum.

Making architecture is both professional exercise, finalized to find new coherent and sustainable solutions to the request of spaces and places transformation, and discipline, oriented to the research and production of beauty and functionality, starting from their primary components – form, materials and techniques.

The studio is strongly oriented to the valuation of the Italian project philosophy and its manufacturing culture, which can have an open and constructive dialogue with the international dynamics of taste and style.

Following its identity vision, rooted in the sign and heritage of the great Milanese masters, the studio organizes its project work with pragmatic sense, human and technical management, and the artistic research and emotion that feed the architecture itself.

In the last years NCB ARCHITETTURA has been improving its own thinking and talent in the South of Italy, taking part to delicate refurbishments, renovation projects and landscape design – a lot of which still in progress – within beautiful territories.

The direct interaction with masters and local artisans keeps helping the studio enhance the knowledge of a thousand-year old and stratified manufacture culture, increasing and influencing its technical know-how and giving it inspiration.

www.scenemediterranee.it

Samuel Balasso

Architect, studies at the Politecnic of Milan and graduates in interior design. After a collaboration with the studio Aldo Rossi (today Arassociati), in 1998 works as designer for B&B contract and from 2000 for Bulthaup. In 2002 becomes an associate of the studio NCB ARCHITETTURA.

Riccardo Emanuele

Architect, graduates from the Politecnic of Milan, then studies at ETSA in Valladolid. Obtains a Master in Applied Ergonomics and is mentioned in several calls for designers. After working as researcher in the academies of London and Milan, becomes a professional in 1998, and is the FAI representative for the delegation of Milan.

Odysseus is probably best known as the eponymous hero of the Odyssey. This epic describes his travails, which lasted for 10 years, as he tries to return home after the Trojan War and reassert his place as rightful king of Ithaca.
On the way home from Troy, after a raid on Ismaros in the land of the Cicones, he and his twelve ships are driven off course by storms. They visit the lethargic Lotus-Eaters and are captured by the Cyclops Polyphemus while visiting his island. After Polyphemus eats several of his men, Polyphemus and Odysseus have a discussion, and Odysseus told Polyphemus his name is “Nobody”. Odysseus takes a barrel of wine, and the Cyclops drinks it, falling asleep. Odysseus and his men take a wooden stake, ignite it with the remaining wine, and blind him. While they escape, Polyphemus cries in pain, and the other Cyclopes ask him what the matter is. Polyphemus cries, “Nobody has blinded me!” and the other Cyclopes think he has gone mad. Odysseus and his crew escape, but Odysseus rashly reveals his real name, and Polyphemus prays to Poseidon, his father, to take revenge. They stay with Aeolus, the master of the winds, who gives Odysseus a leather bag containing all the winds, except the west wind, a gift that should have ensured a safe return home. However, the sailors foolishly open the bag while Odysseus sleeps, thinking that it contains gold. All of the winds fly out, and the resulting storm drives the ships back the way they had come, just as Ithaca comes into sight. After pleading in vain with Aeolus to help them again, they re-embark and encounter the cannibalistic Laestrygonians. Odysseus’ ship is the only one to escape. He sails on and visits the witch-goddess Circe. She turns half of his men into swine after feeding them cheese and wine. Hermes warns Odysseus about Circe and gives him a drug called moly, which resists Circe’s magic. Circe, being attracted to Odysseus’ resistance, falls in love with him and releases his men. Odysseus and his crew remain with her on the island for one year, while they feast and drink. Finally, Odysseus’ men convince him to leave for Ithaca. Guided by Circe’s instructions, Odysseus and his crew cross the ocean and reach a harbor at the western edge of the world, where Odysseus sacrifices to the dead and summons the spirit of the old prophet Tiresias to advise him. Next Odysseus meets the spirit of his own mother, who had died of grief during his long absence. From her, he learns for the first time news of his own household, threatened by the greed of Penelope’s suitors. Odysseus also talks to his fallen war comrades and the mortal shade of Heracles. Returning to Circe’s island, she advises them on the remaining stages of the journey. They skirt the land of the Sirens, pass between the six-headed monster Scylla and the whirlpool Charybdis, where they row directly between the two. However, Scylla drags the boat towards her by grabbing the oars and eats six men.They land on the island of Thrinacia. There, Odysseus’ men ignore the warnings of Tiresias and Circe and hunt down the sacred cattle of the sun god Helios. Helios tells Zeus what happened and demands Odysseus’ men be punished or else he will take the sun and shine it in the Underworld.  Zeus fulfills Helios’ demands by causing a shipwreck during a thunderstorm in which all but Odysseus drown. He washes ashore on the island of Ogygia, where Calypso compels him to remain as her lover for seven years. He finally escapes when Hermes tells Calypso to release Odysseus.Odysseus departs from the Land of the Phaeacians. Painting by Claude Lorrain Odysseus is shipwrecked and befriended by the Phaeacians. After telling them his story, the Phaeacians, led by King Alcinous, agree to help Odysseus get home. They deliver him at night, while he is fast asleep, to a hidden harbor on Ithaca. He finds his way to the hut of one of his own former slaves, the swineherd Eumaeus, and also meets up with Telemachus returning from Sparta. Athena disguises Odysseus as a wandering beggar to learn how things stand in his household. When the disguised Odysseus returns after 20 years, he is recognized only by his faithful dog, Argos. Penelope announces in her long interview with the disguised hero that whoever can string Odysseus’s rigid bow and shoot an arrow through twelve axe shafts may have her hand. According to Bernard Knox, “For the plot of the Odyssey, of course, her decision is the turning point, the move that makes possible the long-predicted triumph of the returning hero”. Odysseus’ identity is discovered by the housekeeper, Eurycleia, as she is washing his feet and discovers an old scar Odysseus received during a boar hunt. Odysseus swears her to secrecy, threatening to kill her if she tells anyone. The return of Ulysses — When the contest of the bow begins, none of the suitors is able to string the bow of Apollo but then, after all the suitors have given up, the disguised Odysseus comes along, bends the bow, shoots the arrow, and wins the contest. Having done so, he proceeds to slaughter the suitors (beginning with Antinous whom he finds drinking from Odysseus’ cup) with help from Telemachus and Odysseus’ servants Eumaeus the swineherd and Philoetius the cowherd. Odysseus tells the serving women who slept with the suitors to clean up the mess of corpses and then has those women hanged in terror. He tells Telemachus that he will replenish his stocks by raiding nearby islands. Odysseus has now revealed himself in all his glory (with a little makeover by Athena);
yet Penelope cannot believe that her husband has really returned—she fears that it is perhaps some god in disguise, as in the story of Alcmene—and tests him by ordering her servant Euryclea to move the bed in their wedding-chamber. Odysseus protests that this cannot be done since he made the bed himself and knows that one of its legs is a living olive tree. Penelope finally accepts that he truly is her husband, a moment that highlights their homophrosýnē (like-mindedness). The next day Odysseus and Telemachus visit the country farm of his old father Laertes. The citizens of Ithaca follow Odysseus on the road,
planning to avenge the killing of the Suitors, their sons. The goddess Athena intervenes and persuades both sides to make peace.