Giada Pettenati is a Swiss-Italian interior architect and graphic designer. Her work investigates the notion of the architectural threshold as a liminal and ritual space—an in-between zone where everyday gestures intersect with symbolic meaning, and where architecture serves as a mediator between intimacy and collectivity. Through a practice that connects body, ritual, and materiality, Giada explores the potential of transitional spaces as places for encounter, listening, and belonging.
Giada studied advertising graphics at CSIA in Lugano before earning a bachelor’s degree in Interior Architecture at SUPSI DACD in Mendrisio, where she deepened her sensitivity to the dynamics of inhabitation. In 2023, she joined the Master of Arts in Interior Architecture at HEAD – Genève, where she developed a design approach that weaves together theory and practice, form and time, gesture and ritual. Within the MAIA program, she focused on the ritual dimension of space, culminating in her diploma project Where Shoes Are Left Behind, a research-based exploration of the symbolic and social significance of the threshold in contemporary living contexts. She has taken part in various architecture and design competitions, earning third prize and a Metaverse Mention in BeSpace – Play the Future (2024). Her practice is marked by a continuous reflection on inhabiting as a transformative act, capable of generating new forms of coexistence, shared silence, and respect for difference.
Diploma Project
The Shape of Rituals
The Shape of Rituals stems from a fundamental question: Can multiple religions coexist within the same space without relinquishing their rituals, forms, and identities? The project emerges from a critical reflection on contemporary multi-faith spaces—such as those found in airports, hospitals, and universities—which, in striving for inclusive neutrality, often lack symbolic resonance and spatial quality.
In response, the project proposes a new typology of sacred space, designed specifically for the Gustave Julliard building of the HUG – University Hospitals of Geneva. Located deliberately outside the hospital’s main circulation routes, the site was chosen to ensure the space remains identifiable, accessible, and symbolically autonomous.
The intervention consists of six architectural volumes, each conceived as a threshold between two religions: Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Sikhism, Hinduism, and Buddhism. These volumes emerged from research into each tradition’s symbols, materials, rituals, and spatial devices. Here, the threshold is not treated as a dividing line, but as an architectural device for transition—hosting spaces for prayer, waiting, and contemplation. Materials such as concrete, ceramics, wood, metal, and terracotta were selected for their symbolic resonance and their capacity to foster a tactile and embodied experience of ritual.
In addition to its spatial design, the project introduces a temporal dimension: each volume operates on a 30-minute cycle, allowing different religious practices to alternate without overlap. This system choreographs the coexistence of multiple rituals, integrating presence, pause, and movement. The Shape of Rituals is proposed as a structure for shared sacredness—one that honors difference without erasure and imagines a respectful architecture of co-presence.
