AARCH – Alfieri Architettura srl, the Catanzaro-based innovative startup pioneering nature-based architectural design, has been selected as a winner of the Chamber of Commerce of Catanzaro, Crotone, and Vibo Valentia’s 2025 video storytelling initiative, with its entrepreneurial journey now featured on Unioncamere’s SNI (Servizio Nuove Imprese) platform.

The recognition marks a significant milestone for the family-run architectural practice, which has transformed traditional architecture through cutting-edge digital technologies whilst maintaining a steadfast commitment to sustainability and human wellbeing. The Chamber of Commerce initiative, part of the Strategic Equalization Fund project 2023-2024 “Skills for Businesses: Guiding and Training Young People for the World of Work”, selected six innovative enterprises from the provinces of Catanzaro, Crotone, and Vibo Valentia to create video interviews showcasing their entrepreneurial stories.

A Legacy Transformed into Innovation
AARCH – Alfieri Architettura represents a remarkable evolution of architectural practice, bridging over 50 years of professional experience with contemporary innovation. Founded as a technical studio in the 1960s by Domenico Alfieri, the practice underwent a transformative rebirth in 2019 when it united the professional studios of his sons, Ivan and Rosario Fabio Alfieri, to establish the current innovative startup.

Today, the firm operates as a society comprising five partners and numerous collaborators, including architects, landscape architects, urban planners, engineers, sustainability specialists, interior architects, computational designers, sociologists, and planners. This multidisciplinary approach enables the studio to deliver comprehensive services—from research and consultancy to design, construction management, and training—to individuals and organisations ranging from municipalities to ministries, the European Commission, and its agencies.

Nature-Based Architecture for Human and Planetary Health
At the heart of AARCH’s philosophy lies a commitment to improving quality of life by reconnecting people with nature. The studio designs and coordinates the realisation of spaces that utilise natural materials and nature-based solutions, with the explicit objective of promoting the health and wellbeing of both people and Planet Earth.

Operating across diverse sectors—from residential to education, healthcare to culture, hospitality to sports—AARCH designs houses, gardens, nurseries, hospitals, museums, cafés, stadiums, and much more, spanning from individual furnishings to entire cities. The unifying principle across all scales is placing life at the centre of design.

The international studio, headquartered in Catanzaro, operates throughout Europe, including Italy, France, Finland, and Sweden. This geographical reach, combined with innovative methodologies, positions AARCH as a pioneering force in sustainable architecture.

Digital Innovation and Technological Excellence

What distinguishes AARCH as an innovative startup is its integration of advanced digital technologies into traditional architectural practice. The firm employs Building Information Modelling (BIM) digital modelling technologies, virtual and augmented reality, and powerful artificial intelligence tools to deliver professional architectural and integrated engineering services.

This technological sophistication enables the studio to operate at the cutting edge of architectural innovation whilst maintaining its commitment to traditional craftsmanship and natural materials. The combination of digital precision and environmental sensitivity creates a unique design methodology that sets AARCH apart in the competitive architectural landscape.

Confronting Industry Challenges with Vision

The studio’s journey has not been without obstacles. As articulated in the video interview prepared for the Chamber of Commerce initiative, today’s competition is fierce—not only from local architecture and engineering studios but also from construction companies and design-build firms with substantial financial resources that can operate anywhere.

Moreover, the practice operates in an environment where enlightened clients, whether public or private, have become increasingly rare. The prevailing demand is for cost-cutting, reductions, and discounts—an approach that, over the past 50 years, has produced problematic outcomes:

• Cities designed for automobiles rather than people, preventing children and the elderly from being autonomous, frightening women, and driving men towards isolation
• Concrete houses covered in plastics and petroleum-derived products, requiring increasingly powerful and energy-intensive machines to maintain comfortable temperatures and combat moulds and pathogens

The true cost of this “false economy” is borne by people, who lose comfort and wellbeing, and by the planet, which loses biodiversity whilst accumulating plastics, toxins, and greenhouse gases.

A Different Approach: Quality Over Luxury

AARCH has consciously chosen not to follow this “madness of false savings”. The studio’s interest lies not in luxury but in quality and respect for life. Every single project represents an opportunity to celebrate life together, through joy and creativity that are perfectly integrated into AARCH’s stylistic identity.^[1]

To achieve this vision, the studio:

• Invests in young professionals and training
• Conducts extensive research on tradition and innovation
• Utilises natural materials such as wood, clay, and cork
• Adopts nature-based solutions including green roofs, passive cooling, and numerous other solutions that do not damage the environment whilst improving the healthiness and health of people and the Planet

Recognition Within the SNI Platform

The Chamber of Commerce initiative places AARCH’s story within the broader context of Unioncamere’s SNI (Servizio Nuove Imprese) platform, a national service launched by the Italian Chamber of Commerce system to support aspiring and new entrepreneurs. The SNI platform, accessible at sni.unioncamere.it, provides virtual services and physical presence to accompany aspiring entrepreneurs in the adventure of establishing a new enterprise.

The platform offers seminars for initial awareness-raising, information and guidance, specialist information activities related to sectors with specific regulations (including female entrepreneurship, migrants, innovative startups, and social enterprises), first guidance and information interviews regarding specific entrepreneurial paths, and in-depth consultations with “The Expert Responds”—technical specialists from chambers of commerce across Italy.

Within this ecosystem, the “Stories of New Enterprises” section showcases video interviews with entrepreneurs whose journeys can inspire, inform, and guide others considering entrepreneurial ventures. AARCH’s selection for this initiative recognises both the studio’s innovative character and its potential to serve as a model for others.

The Significance of Innovative Startup Status

AARCH’s registration as an innovative startup in the special section of the Business Register provides access to significant advantages. Innovative startups in Italy are capital companies, including cooperatives, whose exclusive or prevalent corporate purpose is the development, production, and commercialisation of innovative products or services with high technological value.

To maintain this status, companies must demonstrate specific characteristics related to research and development expenditure, relationships with public administration, patent holdings, or employment of qualified personnel. The new regulations introduced in 2025 have modified the framework for innovative startups, extending potential registration from three to seven years for companies demonstrating exceptional growth as “scale-ups”.

For AARCH, innovative startup status signifies formal recognition of its technological innovation, research orientation, and growth potential—credentials that enhance its competitiveness in pursuing projects with public and private clients across Europe.

A Message to Aspiring Entrepreneurs

Through its participation in the Chamber of Commerce video storytelling initiative, AARCH offers guidance to others considering entrepreneurial ventures in creative and technical fields. The studio’s journey demonstrates that success requires more than technical competence—it demands vision, courage to challenge prevailing assumptions, commitment to values beyond short-term profit, investment in people and continuous learning, and willingness to embrace innovation whilst respecting tradition.

The video interview, prepared for broadcast on the SNI platform, enables AARCH to share these insights with a national audience of aspiring entrepreneurs, contributing to a culture of informed, values-driven entrepreneurship in Italy.

Looking Forward

AARCH’s recognition by the Chamber of Commerce and inclusion in the SNI platform arrives at a pivotal moment for sustainable architecture globally. As climate change intensifies and awareness of buildings’ environmental and health impacts grows, AARCH’s nature-based approach positions the studio at the forefront of necessary transformation in the built environment sector.

The studio’s combination of deep regional roots, international operational scope, technological sophistication, and environmental commitment creates a distinctive model—one that demonstrates how architectural practice can be simultaneously innovative and traditional, locally grounded and globally relevant, technologically advanced and ecologically sensitive.

For aspiring architects and entrepreneurs, AARCH exemplifies how professional practice can serve purposes beyond commercial success—how design can become an instrument for celebrating life, promoting health, protecting biodiversity, and creating spaces where humans and nature thrive together.

The video storytelling initiative ensures that this message reaches audiences throughout Italy and beyond, potentially inspiring the next generation of architectural innovators to pursue excellence defined not by luxury or scale but by quality, sustainability, and reverence for life.