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Interdisciplinary design studio
led by Sasha Topolnytska
in New York City
Young Architects Competitions' Space to Culture, 2014
Bologna, Italy
In collaboration with Lindsay Harkema & Geoffrey Salvatore
Araptive reuse, architectural installation
Guild-UP! is a proposal to reimagine the former factory as an incubator for modern guilds—collectives of young makers coming together to form new productive organizations for the city’s future. Learning from Bologna’s rich history of merchant guilds and the birth of the modern university as a shared space for living and learning, this project reactivates those traditions within a contemporary context. The historic model of the guild is reintroduced through a 21st-century “start-up” lens. This project begins with the recognition that production has been separated from its cultural and communal meaning. Within the shell of a disused industrial building—once an engine of collective labor—it proposes a new model for production as culture, community, history, and future. The factory, now a relic of another era of making, becomes a vessel for reuniting these values through lived experience and creative practice.
In medieval Bologna, guilds—associations of artisans and tradespeople—were the foundation of both civic identity and education, ultimately giving rise to the university as an institution of collective innovation. Guild-UP! revives that spirit for today’s generation: the millennial and post-millennial creators facing economic precarity, loss of tradition, and the effects of globalization.
The goal is to cultivate a spatial framework that supports the formation of new guilds—organizations that are simultaneously social, educational, cultural, and commercial. Resident collectives live, work, and grow within the building for a period of time, transforming it into their house, school, workshop, and stage for public engagement.
Live / Work. The main concourse of the building hosts a hybrid production and residential zone. Here, collectives immerse themselves in a shared environment where daily life and work intertwine. The space is conceived as an open-plan studio, loosely divided by thickened partitions—living walls—that contain private sleeping and storage niches while framing communal workstations. These walls function as thresholds between intimate and collective realms, fostering both focus and collaboration. Patterns in the floor subtly delineate different activity zones, guiding the flow of movement and exchange.
Kitchen. At the heart of the Live/Work space lies the communal kitchen—the social core of the building. It replaces the conventional cafeteria model with a generous central hearth surrounded by preparation counters and communal tables that merge into the adjacent living walls. Here, cooking and eating become collective rituals of pause, dialogue, and care. The kitchen also forms a key circulation hub, linking the social life of the factory to its upper levels and reinforcing the continuum between work, nourishment, and community.
Shed. The factory’s former shed is transformed into a Public Stage—a place where the city meets the process of innovation. Rather than hiding production, this space celebrates it. The public occupies a central platform, surrounded by working “stages” where projects unfold in view. The configuration inverts the traditional theatre: here, making is performance. A bar along one edge encourages further mingling between residents and visitors, turning curiosity into dialogue and participation.
Archive. Floating above the factory floor like an inhabited attic, the Archive preserves the memory of each collective’s work. With its own ground-level entrance, it invites the public to engage with the tangible legacy of those who have passed through the building. The archive serves simultaneously as an exhibition, a documentation lab, and a digital library—scanning, recording, and sharing the innovations generated within. When collectives graduate to establish themselves beyond the factory, traces of their production remain here as part of Bologna’s evolving chronicle of cultural creation