Time for Impact

Time for Impact is an online platform that promotes urgent challenges in the built environment that are in need of design expertise, spatial know-how and budget.

Time for Impact is a an online platform curated by Gianpiero Venturini (Itinerant Office – New Generation) and Marthijn Pool (space&matter). It works as an Architectural Time Bank and Kickstarting Tool, promoting urgent challenges in the built environment that are in need of design expertise, spatial know- how and budget. Creative people from all over the world are invited to pledge their time and know-how to collectively boost socially relevant projects.

For the opening of the 15. Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, the team made up of Italian and Dutch professionals proposed an innovative program, a design issue, a conscious act of rewriting the great challenges that architecture has to actively take on today. The curators reclaim the need to define new possible paths for architecture and its social role. Many professionals are joining the cause, that announces a changing direction in the use of time in architectural design.

Opening: al bordE, School in El Cabuyal, Ecuador, 2011. Photo: Esteban Cadena. Above: Balloons announcing the Time for Impact event opening at the Serra dei Giardini in Venice, on Thursday May 26, 2016. Photo: Jade Eleonoire

“Why does the architecture industry invest huge amounts of creativity and time in design competitions, knowing that only few contributors will be rewarded for their effort?” “What kind of impact could this industry have if only a fraction of this time was collectively spent on urgent global issues?”
These were some of the questions at the center of the debate that saw the participation of: Floris Alkemade (Dutch chief government architect and former partner at OMA), Ole Bouman (Founding Director of the Shekou Design Museum in Shenzhen), Beatrice Galilee (curator of architecture and design at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City), Joseph Grima (founder at Space Caviar), Luca Molinari (architecture critic and curator), Rogier van den Berg (project leader of the Urban Planning and Design LAB at UN-Habitat) with Marco Brizzi (founder and director at Image and The Architecture Player) as moderator. 

Presentation by Gianpiero Venturini (Itinerant Office / New Generations) at the Time for Impact event at the Serra dei Giardini in Venice. Photo: Jade Eleonoire

The objective for the organizers is to reach 5.000+ supporters, who will pledge their time to collaborate on selected challenges, in the next 4 months. Participation in terms of time pledging will be open on the Time for Impact website until November 27, 2016, when the collaborative platform will be launched in a public meeting at the Biennale in Venice and the selected challenges will be announced.

Time for Impact campaign spreading around the city of Venice. Here in Piazza San Marco. Photo: Francesco Ceola


unti 27 November 2016
Time for Impact
curated by Gianpiero Venturini (Itinerant Office – New Generation) and Marthijn Pool (space&matter)
in collaboration with AiD (Architecture in Development)
promoted by Ambasciata del Regno dei Paesi Bassi a Roma and the Creative Industries Fund NL