The title of the Italian Pavilion on the 18th. International Architecture Exhibition (Saturday, May 20 – Sunday, November 26, 2023), “Spatial – Everyone Belongs to Everyone Else,” hints at a relational conception of space. After all, the curatorship is the collective by Fosbury Architecture, a collective of young architects (Giacomo Ardesio, Alessandro Bonizzoni, Nicola Campri, Veronica Caprino, Claudia Mainardi; no one over 40) who chose their name from the high jump champion Dick Fosbury (Portland, March 6, 1947 – Portland, March 12, 2023). A metaphor for a pavilion in motion that will not exhibit a reconnaissance but a narrative not limited to the spaces of the Tese delle Vergini and the duration of the exhibition, thanks to nine site-specific projects destined for as many “spatially critical” places in Italy, since “what restores the dimension of ‘place’ to a place, is time.” Speaking at the press conference was Maria Vittoria Clarini Clarelli, art historian and executive of the Ministry of Culture.
A spatial pavilion
Space is a “symbolic physical place, a geographical area of abstract dimension, a territory of possibilities. On this trunk is grafted the project of Fosbury Architecture, in which architecture is not so much a “built space” as “the network of relationships that allow one to settle in the present reality, and that concern the body, the environment, the landscape, physical and political geography, education and cultural heritage in its material and immaterial survival.” The bet is no longer on individual signs but participatory and transdisciplinary planning for urgent issues. “In the Italian language, expressions like “fare spazio” indicate welcome; “dare spazio” is the invitation to intervene and participate. Reality has critical dimensions, and the focus of the project is on fragile and problematic spaces,” perfectly embedded in the “Laboratory of the Future” that is the title given by curator, architect and writer Lesley Lokko (Ghana/Scotland) to this edition of the Architecture Biennale.
“We represent the generation that grew up in a context of permanent crisis. We enrolled in college at the turn of 2007-2008 (the two black years of the subprime mortgage crash, ed.),” says Giacomo Ardesio, who understands the crisis as “a long period of instability and insecurity, especially that resulting from a series of catastrophic events.” However, the construction sector, urbanization in the broadest sense, “knows no crisis and is responsible for 40 percent of carbon dioxide emissions, and 36 percent of electricity consumption.” At the same time, “architects are less and less protagonists in transforming cities and territories. In Italy, architecture is experiencing a crisis of relevance.
But, as Lesley Lokko stated, architectural practices are the only ones that can give rise to new forms of public policy and imagine different ways of living. Ardesio continues, “To quote Thomas Khun, when a revolution occurs, the paradigm changes. The project of scarcity, understood as a better and optimal use of resources, is an opportunity for us.” Since it is clear that the context has changed, we are “a young generation of architects who have learned to operate in disillusionment.” The spatially and temporally expanded project of the Italian Pavilion is divided into three phases.
The nine site-specific projects
Veronica Caprino explains, “The first is the activation of the projects; the second is the pavilion proper, a theoretical synthesis of the projects activated in the territories. The third phase is about continuing all the projects beyond the exhibition’s duration. The nine places involved in the “expanded” project of the Italian Pavilion are Taranto, Ieranto, Trieste, Ripa Teatina, the Venetian mainland, Cabras, Librino, Belmonte Calabro, and the plain of Pistoia. In Taranto on the city rooftops, the Disaster collective questions the possibility of living with disaster: Taranto is paradigmatic of a significant condition of fragility. In the Bay of Ieranto (Massa Lubrense, Naples, BB architects – Alessandro Bava and Fabrizio Ballabio – with Terraforma Festival), the theme is that of reconciliation with the environment, of the possibility of reaffirming a spatial pact between man and nature. Trieste is a border city par excellence on the Italian-Slovenian border, a historical symbol of peaceful coexistence (analysis by Giuditta Vendrame with Ana Shametaj).
In Ripa Teatina, Abruzzo, we reflect on the theme of unfinished public works on the possibility of regenerating by deconstructing through participatory reactivation with the local community (HPO with Claudia Durastanti). The Venetian mainland, the productive and logistical counterbalance of the Serenissima, is dedicated to the democratization of recreational activities (Parasite 2.0 with Elia Fornari). In Cabras, Sardinia, on the border between the Montiferro and Sinis areas, we ask what the relationship between agriculture and food transition might be, examining the Sardinian botargo supply chain (Lemonot group with Roberto Flore). In Librino (Catania), the theme is the regeneration of the suburbs, one of the most populous in Italy, experimenting with new pedagogies (Studio Ossidiana with Adelita Husni Bey). In Belmonte calabro, they reflect on bridging the digital divide between territories (Horizontal Collective and Bruno Zamborlin). In the Florence Prato Pistoia Plain, “the places and processes of production of the Tuscan pastoral idyll” are investigated with (ab)Normal and CAPTCHA in collaboration with Emilio Vavarella.
A “new world”
In 1932 Aldous Huxley gave the dystopian “New World” to the presses. At the end of that novel, the feeling toward progress is ambiguous. “Mondo Novo” is the title of the painting (1791) by Giandomenico Tiepolo, a painting created at the end of an era between the French Revolution and the fall of the Serenissima. The curators write, “The painter works a reversal of representation, and the thronging crowd in the foreground prevents us from seeing what is behind. Contained in the frenzy of the characters is a feeling of deep disquiet and the imminent end of an era. With the same trepidation and uncertainties, we contemplate the horizon in search of some clue to help us decipher its future, in the hope that it will be a space where ‘Everyone belongs to everyone else.'”
