The name of the installation was inspired by Martin Heidegger and his use of the term Lichtung, describing a clearing in which matter becomes perceptible, enabling one’s awareness of self and being-in-the-world. The project reveals and amplifies the atmospheric conditions of the alluvial forest—light, humidity, temperature, scent, and sound—as one moves along the riverside pathway. Seven clearings are positioned along the route, each attuned to shifting environmental conditions such as time of day, shade intensity, humidity gradients, and walking pace. These spaces encourage visitors to slow down, pause, and contemplate the changing atmosphere of the alluvial forest.

In each clearing lies a large-scale bench inviting visitors to sit or lie comfortably while experiencing the transformations of the humid atmosphere. Carefully crafted from hand-sculpted molds, the benches resemble oversized tree stumps, referencing the primordial forests of Bavaria. Although inspired by natural forms, the objects are intentionally distinguished from their surroundings through their exaggerated scale and golden hue. Appearing as uncanny artifacts within the Danubian floodplain, their thermal mass absorbs daytime warmth, creating a microclimate that encourages longer, more comfortable occupation of the space.

A field of yellow-painted tree trunks marks the project’s southern and northern entryways, extending the installation’s dialogue between landscape, infrastructure, and atmospheric perception. The painted height registers the elevation of a nearby dike constructed to protect the eastern neighborhoods of Ingolstadt from seasonal flooding.

Team: Silvia Benedito & Alexander Häusler (partners), Emily Schlickmann (Project Manager), Marcus Eichermüller, Marissa Angell, Hope Strode, Gabriella Solange
Fotos: Jann Averwerser

At its core is a permeable communal green space that acts as social, climatic, and hydrological infrastructure. It supports daily collective life through shared gardens, children’s areas, a communal kitchen and oven, laundry and a water tank, resting zones, and informal gathering spaces. All units and circulation are oriented toward this interior landscape, extending living spaces through terraces and gallery-balconies, and fostering exchange between residents within a naturally cross-ventilated environment.

The housing is conceived as a co-living community, combining compact private units with large shared spaces for informal interaction, intergenerational living, and mutual support. The units are based on a 3 m × 11.5 m structural module, derived from the structural frame and parking geometry, allowing adaptable unit types through addition or reduction of the module. Kitchens and bathrooms are aligned as shared service cores between units to optimize construction costs and promote adaptability. The first floor of the housing blocks is made in locally sourced granite blocks, while the upper levels use a CLT timber structural system, enabling lighter construction and modular assembly.

The project emphasizes ecological performance and biodiversity protection through rainwater harvesting, infiltration gardens, and underground cisterns integrated with the semi-underground garage, ensuring resilience to increasing drought conditions. Climatically, the courtyard-garden works as a passive system for ventilation, shading, and temperature regulation.

Overall, the proposal creates a resilient, integrated living environment where architecture, landscape, intergenerational exchange, and ecology operate as one caring assemblage.

Team: Silvia Benedito (partner) with Telmo Cruz (co-architect), Marcus Eichermüller and Daniella Slowik
Engineers Structural, Water, Electricity and Fire Safety: ECA Projects, Lda / Eng. Paulo Sampaio

Catalogue by Monade 2023
Editor: Marta Sequeira / essays: João Ferrão, Kath Scanlon, Luís Mendes, Marta Sequeira, Paulo Tormenta Pinto
Conversations: Ana Drago, Cristina de Mendonça, Filipa Roseta, Joana Pestana Lages, José Adrião, Ricardo Bak Gordon
Contributions: Helena Roseta, Inês Lobo, João Gomes da Silva, João Luís Carrilho da Graça, João Seixas, Nuno Valentim, Sandra Marques Pereira, Sílvia Benedito, Telmo Cruz>br>Frames: Tiago Casanova
Photography: André Cepeda, Beatriz Martins, Daniel Malhão, Nuno Cera, Irene Buarque, Paulo Catrica
Design: Macedo Cannatà
Isbn: 978-989-5370-55-9

The work included the collaboration with a local horticulturalist, expert in tropical plants particular to the climate of Florida (highly damp and hot), and the implementation of a local nursery for overall costs control and maintenance in the future. Both projects provide welcoming hotel entrances, planted edges for privacy between the clients and the public, and vegetated hedges to absorb the white noise from the surrounding highways and roads. Paired with these scopes of work was the development of an efficient drainage scheme to avoid zones of still water as to reduce mosquito breeding sites. Wide canopy trees and bio-swales are included in the parking lots and entry zones not only to create a sense of place but also to provide shelter during the hot summer days.

Status: Design Development

Program: Landscape Masterplan
Location: Orlando, Florida

Client: Cambridge Landmark 

Date: 2019

Team: Larissa Belcic (Project Manager), Greta Ruedisueli, Samuel Gilbert

OFICINAA was commissioned by the play director and actress Olivia Went to develop the stage concept and the design, building it in cooperation with the technical team at the Theater Ingolstadt. The stage design reflects the passage of time and the rhythm of the seasons, as the mice gather the food in the meadows of spring.

The changing seasons are depicted through four distinct levels at varying heights, connected by a continuous ramp that evokes the stone wall where the mice reside. This design adds depth and volume to the stage, while also creating a narrative space through which the character of Leo Lionni—portrayed by actor Benjamin Dami-Yamamoto—journeys during the transitions of the seasons. The play culminates in winter, at the highest point of the ramp sequence, where Frederick brings to life the vibrant colors of the seasons he have gathered.

The stage and all props have been crafted from woolen felt in various primary colors, evoking simplicity, softness, and warmth—all illuminated by a suspended golden-sun.

Program: Theater Stage Design


Client: Junges Theater Werkstatt, Stadttheater Ingolstadt
Date: September-Dezember 2019

Team: Silvia Benedito, Larissa Belcic, Marion Eisenmann (illustrator)

Despite the undeniable bond to human’s history, fire has become one of the most politically charged and contested elements. This has been fueled by an ethical awakening in the core of ongoing systemic inequalities linking the history of fire suppression with cultural marginalization and the colonial dispossession of traditional communities—these, practitioners of "Cold-fires” to assist pastoral and silvo-agricultural production, spiritual well-being, cultural practices, biodiversity stewardship, or simply protection against wildfire threats. This presentation illustrates a few examples on how local governments and collective initiatives have established new design reciprocities aiming to re-introducing fire as a catalytic element in ecological stewardship and cultural affirmation.

Program: Lecture in Symposium: Landscape as Architecture, Accademia di Architettura, Mendrisio

When does the scope of architecture stop and landscape architecture start (and vice-versa) relative to thermally safe public environments? Disciplinary liability and insurance requirements for design practices often emphasize topics such as safety, quality of life, and the implementation of standards, yet they also raise questions concerning disciplinary boundaries in the context of thermal protection. While landscape architecture seems more concerned with the horizontal domain (the ground) and architecture with the vertical (the wall), interrogating bounded disciplinary scopes is essential for addressing issues of thermal adaptation, climatic justice, and decarbonization.

Benedito’s essay argues for a disciplinary convergence between Architecture and Landscape Architecture in which the wall and the vertical/horizontal sections are discussed as inhabited spaces for thermal protection and architectural innovation.

Editors: Daniel A. Barber, Jeannette Kuo, Ola Uduku, Thomas Auer, Nick Axel, Nikolaus Hirsch

Citation: 
Silvia Benedito, After Comfort: A User’s Guide, “Space of Convergence,” e-flux Architecture and the University of Technology Sydney, the Technical University of Munich, the University of Liverpool, and Transsolar, 2023-2024


Read Online

Download the Essay (PDF)

“an ambitious collection of essays that proposes a new framework for understanding landscape design.” 
– Landscape Architecture Magazine

“It is rare - and always thrilling - to discover a book that makes us think differently about architecture, by helping us to understand hitherto inscrutable aspects of it.”
 – Alice Rawsthorn

“Through the detailed study of a series of seminal projects Silvia Benedito brilliantly demonstrates that atmospheres can actually be described and interpreted with great precision. In a time of environmental anxiety, her call for a paradigmatic shift centered on the atmospheric opens new and important perspectives for the design disciplines.” - Antoine Picon, G. Ware Travelstead Professor of the History of Architecture and Technology at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University

Publisher: Lars Müller, Zürich
Photos by Iwan Baan
Date: Dezember 2022

Currently Sold-Out (in Europe)

Team: Silvia Benedito & Alexander Häusler (partners)
Larissa Belcic, Lauren Seowon Choi, Nicholas Jungblut, Dohyun Lee, Yixin Li 
Carson Booth, Parawee Wachirabuntoon, Estello-Cisdre Raganit, Amanda Ton, Jena Tegeler, Zeqi Liu
Tim McDowd, Gabriella Solange Rodriguez-Berrios, Alison Malouf, Euipoom Estelle Yoon

Thermal Engineering:
TRANSSOLAR: Matthias Schuler, Peter Zatko, Phillip Kunze, Felix Thumm, Pratik Raval

Structural Engineering:
 KNIPPERS HELBIG; Thorsten Helbig, Florian Meier, Ruben Heiming, Huberst Chang

Engineering Consultant:
 KIPPKITTS; Kipp Bradford

Visualisations:
 LUXIGON; Eric de Broche des Combe

Through its social, cultural, ecological and climatic objectives, the project revitalizes a nearly forgotten fluvial landscape with small, practical, and adaptable interventions. Functioning on multiple scales, it operates at a regional level while seamlessly integrating into its immediate surroundings through thoughtful design.

Team: Silvia Benedito & Alexander Häusler (partners), 
Larissa Belcic, Emily Schlickman, Pia Faust

This siting strategy engages the thick fluvial landscape (extended into the inner courts by the addition of a new substantial tree canopy) and exposes the apartments to the prevailing breezes from the West. This exposure facilitates aeration of the domestic areas and, simultaneously, shelters the inner courts for an increased use of the community during the winter months.

The apartments face East-West and have private gardens to the West. Attached to these gardens, both the kitchen and living rooms extend their areas with the corresponding access to the sunset exposure and the pleasures of living in the outdoors.

Team: Silvia Benedito & Alexander Häusler (partners), David Birge, Velania Cervino