Venice: La Biennale di Venezia - 14th International
Architecture Exhibition: Italia Pavilion
– Innesti/Graftings. In the Italian Pavilion, curated by
Cino Zucchi the exhibition Innesti/Graftings. The theme assigned to the national pavilions - Absorbing Modernity 1914/2014 - by Rem
Koolhaas is developed by looking not so much for elements of “resisting the
new” in the Italian territory, as the particular sense in which the modern
condition is interpreted in this country.
Above - the entrance to the Italia Pavilion. The
theme of Grafts is addressed by the installation in concrete, physical
form. A large arched portal in oxidized
metal dilates the profile of the existing entrance in an anamorphic way. The affectionate nickname of ‘Archimbuto’
attests to its ambiguous iconicity, at once industrial and monumental,
figurative and abstract.
Italia Pavilion – Innesti/Graftings. “Italian
architecture since the First World War to today demonstrates an ‘anomalous
modernity’, represented by its significant capacity to interpret and
incorporate previous states through continuous metamorphosis. Not adaptations
of form of the new compared to the existing in retrospect, but rather
‘grafting’ an ability to transfigure the conditions of the context into a new
configuration: an attitude that was once viewed by some as nostalgic or a
compromise, but which today is admired by Europe and the world as the most
original contribution of Italian design culture.", writes Cino Zucchi curator of the
Italian pavilion.
Italia Pavilion – Innesti/Graftings. The journey
begins with the ‘case’ of Milan which has been used as an example of
“laboratory of the modern”, whose architectonic and city planning affairs of
the last 100 years, but also several key moments in its past history, demonstrate
the particular means employed by projects with a large transformative role
compared to the pre-existing urban structure. From historical Milan to the city
that will hosts Expo 2015.
Milan: The Fabrica del Duomo – Architecture in Search
of a Face. The large gothic mass of the Duomo, and its structure of five
cascading naves, has for centuries been a constantly changing construction
site. The many proposals for its façade,
which were designed over years, illustrate effectively the mutations of
architectural paradigms and the deep conflict between Renaissance and Baroque
formal syntax based on the system of classical orders and the existing
organism, and the attempts to find compromises or fresh synthesis between them.
Milan: Bombs over Milan – The Modern Reconstruction
of the Center. The rather casual location of the destruction generated by the
1943 bombing raids, and the need to quickly find an effective strategy for the
reconstruction, generates a series of single interventions or of local urban
plans based on the model which is both clear and flexible. The “double articulation" of building volumes
publicized by Piero Bottoni manages to consolidate the existing urban form
using a base which follows the perimeter of the plot, while a higher body
setback from the street allows for the light and air circulation necessary to
modern buildings.
Milan: The Rising City – A Century-Long Debate Over
the New Skyline. From the turn of the
last century, Milan’s low horizon has been progressively modified by a number
of higher buildings. The title of the
1911 Futurist painting by Umberto Boccioni, The Rising City, anticipates the
continuous dilemma and debate between innovation and permanence. Milan’s professional culture has managed to
produce high-rise buildings of noteworthy urban quality; if works like the
Torre Gaffe, the Torre Velasca and the Grattacielo Pirelli show different
interpretations of the theme, the latest urban intervention seems to challenge
once more the question of the scale of the city in relationship with the
existing structure and with the larger territorial network.
Milan: Expo 2015 – A Laboratory for the Environment.
The installation shows the great Expo Laboratory, which is starting towards its
very ambitious objective. The urban
concept of the entire area, the project for the thematic clusters, the Italian
pavilion. It shows various articulations of the idea of a new awareness
regarding the environment that will give life to the event, and possible future
projections of the metamorphosis of the area after the event.
Italia Pavilion – Innesti/Graftings: A Contemporary
Landscape. The different conditions of
the Italian territory and the different economical, programmatic and social
contexts founding the processes of transformation cannot be brought back in any
way to a single model. The best design
culture of these years is nevertheless animated by a common attitude: the careful observation of the site, of its
constraints, of its potentials, and the capacity to intervene on it with an act
of transformation able to absorb them into its body and to turn them into a new
inhabited landscape.
Above. Edificio per uffici e centro elaborazione
dati – Giussaniarch, Milan. LCV. Law Court offices – C + S Architects, Venezia.
A Contemporary Landscape: Housing Giustiniano
Imperatore – ABDR Architetti Ass., Roma
A Contemporary Landscape: Ring Road – MoDus Architects, Bressanone a
Varna (BZ)
Italia Pavilion – Innesti/Graftings – Cut and Past
Environments. The modern collage technique
played an important role in many moments of critical reflection on the
fundaments of the discipline and on the autonomy of the architectural
phenomena, as in the recent past the ones of the Italian “Tendenza” and of the
“Architettura Radicale”. Today a number
of authors seems to have reconnected the broken thread of this research,
working on the delicate border between the altered or surreal dimensions
allowed to the figurative arts and the utopic prefiguration of design
proposals.
Above. Carmelo Baglivo (laN+) – Luogho del Culto,
2013.
Cut and Past Environments: Carmel Baglivo and
Beniamino Servino – Sopraelevazione per Analogia, Graffito Blu, 2013
Italia Pavilion – Innesti/Graftings – Inhabited
Landscapes - Life adapts to the Spaces Which Adapt to Life. If the Italian urban spaces and territory
appear in turn as an “open air museum” or as the places of environmental
neglect, they are also and above all the backdrop of the everyday life of their
inhabitants. A series of videos realized
by different authors through a public “open call’ is mounted together to form a
large animated landscape, showing different and contradictory sides of the
relationship between collective spaces and the life which flows through them,
adapts to them, transforms or abandons them.
The Virgins’ Ribbon, winds through the trees in the
Giardino delle Vergini, garden at the back of the Italia pavilion.
