Creating, traveling, drawing, and building: such is the DNA of the exuberant architect and designer Marcelo Joulia. Driven from his home country of Argentina by the 1976 military coup, this personal trauma gave him the strength to be a great builder. For thirty years, his agency Naço —‘intuition’ in the Guarani language—has been the laboratory of a global and inventive architecture, aiming to decompartmentalise genres and trades, and mixing knowledge, arts, and professional backgrounds together. Belonging to no specific school, and fiercely attached to his independence and freedom, he has imagined a unique creative space in which expertise and rigour both flourish within the domains of luxury, urban mobility, and major architecture. As an insatiable adventurer, he is able to take an interest in anything —large-scale buildings, design, furniture, bicycles, boats— while not denying himself anything. His passion revolves around teamwork and bringing talents together to conceive of new worlds. As an epicurean, a generous person passionate about art and gastronomy, Marcelo Joulia creates places in his image: unique, welcoming, and always dynamic.

This book showcases the vision of a man and an agency that has surrounded itself with the best and strived to bring to life a demanding and iconoclastic architecture, and carry it forth into the future.

Beyond a simple fascination for NASA, the manual is of interest for several reasons:
— It is an exhaustive presentation of visual identity – from letterheads to the markings on the space shuttle Discovery
— and thus allows the reader to apprehend the different formal, political and technical scales of the use of signs.
— The clarity of its texts which guided the personnel responsible for producing new documents contrasts sharply with the mainstream vocabulary in the communications field today.
— As an object, it is worthy of the interest it has created. It demonstrates the ambition and care taken in its presentation. Its format facilitates manipulation to ensure the organization, comprehension and implementation of the instructions and propositions it contains.