VENICE - Arsenale

10th Biennale of Architecture - The Italian Pavilion. At last, Italy has it's own pavilion, but it's not in the Giardini where all the other countries have theirs, it's at the Arsenale. Let me specify, there is an Italian Pavilion in the giardini, but it is used as a pot-pourri showcase. The New Italian Pavilion's exhibition, curated by Franco Purini, is called The New City. Italia-y-2026. Invitation to Vema. Vema is an ideal city with streets leading towards the future of Italian architecture. Situated between VErona and MAntova, this is a city that is feasible, testing the planning talents of twenty young architects and emerging architectural groups. On show are plastic models and a gigantic model of the city summarizing and presenting a possible hypothesis of Italy in twenty years. I bumped into Alessandro Mendini on the vaporetto home and we both had exactly the same impression of the new Italian Pavilion, in Mendini's words "It looks just like a private loft for two people."

www.labiennale.org www.ateliermendini.it