Aion Information

AION is an architectural practice which engages the complexity of built environments with an integral approach. In each project, the studio aims at triggering novel ecologies operating across urban and environmental processes that encompass multiple scales and domains with the objective of achieving a high system performance while generating innovative spatial conditions. AION perceives architectural form as an expression of creative negotiation between material characteristics, structural pressures, functional requirements, normative prescriptions, socio-political desires, cultural tendencies and environmental dynamics. We perceive the project not as a representation of preconceived formal ideas but as a learning system which acquires complexity out of the capacity to absorb and process information. Each project gains consistency out of the creative redundancy which offers unexpected functional and formal opportunities that occasionally erupt as pure ornament. AION initiated its activities in 2005 to become a registered practice based in Siracusa, Italy in 2008. The studio was founded by Andrea Di Stefano (1973, Italy) and Aleksandra Jaeschke (1976, Poland), both graduated from the Architectural Association in London in 2005. In parallel to commissioned design projects and feasibility studies, AION runs research initiatives, organises student workshops and contributes to the international debate through lectures and publications. AION participated in numerous conferences and exhibitions; the studio was present in the Italian Pavilion at the Shanghai Expo 2010 and at the XIII International Biennal de Arquitectura in Buenos Aires. AION was part of the "ARCHITEKTUR! Stories of contemporary architecture between Italy and Germany", a conference series held at the MAXXI Museum in Rome in 2012. AION first solo exhibition "Eco-Machines" was hosted by the Museum of Architecture in Wroclaw in Poland in 2013. In 2010 Studio AION received the newitalianblood award for one of the TOP 10 Architects Under 40 in Italy and subsequently in Poland. Andrea Di Stefano and Aleksandra Jaeschke received the prestigious Europe 40 Under 40 award for 2011.