We will most likely reach the opening of Biennale 2023 without any anticipation of what shapes and visual features to expect from the interiors of the Pavilion overlooking the Darsena in Venice’s Arsenale.
Still, this might also be the first time when knowing such fatures in advance could not be essential: in the project curated by Fosbury Architecture (Giacomo Ardesio, Alessandro Bonizzoni, Nicola Campri, Veronica Caprino, Claudia Mainardi), the surface of the Italian Pavilion is the surface of Italy itself. As already revealed in these months with Spaziale presenta, the first phase of the project, the content is made by the activation of nine different projects on the national territory, of which the container-pavilion will be a conceptual and formal synthesis.
What we know about the Italian Pavilion at Venice Biennale 2023
A generational snapshot, a pavilion the size of a country. Fosbury Architecture discusses Spaziale and its 9 projects, Italian participation at Lesley Lokko’s Biennale.
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- Giovanni Comoglio
- 28 April 2023
Rooftops as unconventional urban spaces from which to catch an immediate glimpse on the effects of crisis (environmental, economic, social...) and, at the same time, imagine alternative futures together.
Photo by Sara Scanderebech
Photo by Sara Scanderebech
Together with the Terraforma music festival team, a stage machine is defined, that is as capable of revealing the environmental state of the seafloor as it is of generating new forms of ritual aggregation.
Photo by Luca Campari
Photo by Luca Campari
An installation that reactivates the underground tunnels of an air raid shelter built during World War II, an investigation into the sense of belonging.
Photo by Eleonora Agostini
Photo by Eleonora Agostini
An opportunity to imagine a new participatory reactivation process, capable of taming an “ecomostro” (environmental building abuse).
Photo by Barbara Rossi
Photo by Barbara Rossi
New totemic bouldering structures, new climbing routes, serving the local community, to reimagine the mainland metropolitan area as a free wilderness
Photo by Giacomo Bianco
Photo by Giacomo Bianco
Rethinking food production and consumption systems, which are often influenced by international dynamics that produce considerable knock-on effects.
Photo by Giovanni Emilio Galanello
Photo by Giovanni Emilio Galanello
Inside a “ghost park”, a mobile and temporary pavilion becomes the interpreter of a collective desire for shade, protection and lightness, proposing to activate an alternative and transgenerational pedagogy.
Photo by Alessanddro Iovino
Photo by Alessandro Iovino
Reactivating a disused space to promote a direct exchange between the inhabitants and the place through a light architectural intervention and through experimentation with new sensory devices.
Photo by Adrianna Glaviano
Photo by Adrianna Glaviano
Investigating the places and processes of production of the Tuscan pastoral idyll, a typical self-replicating landscape becoming a model to be exported worldwide.
Photo by Mattia Balsamini
Photo by Mattia Balsamini
These projects envision the possibility of a different understanding for the meaning of “making architecture”, as Fosbury has confirmed to Domus, especially now that architecture is being made by a generation that has grown up through a scenario of almost chronic crisis, where practitioners find themselves responding to social contexts that often express needs for meaning, empathy, and reconnection to their spaces and territories. This is where the core concept of Spaziale – "Everyone belongs to everyone else" – springs, this the foundation on which Fosbury’s curatorial team has built their selection of Spazialisti (Spatialists), “those who exploit the codified tools of design to question the social conditions of the places in which they intervene”.
It is in the curatorial methodology of team building, in fact, that the two major characteristics of Spaziale can be identified: the first, being “a generational snapshot” as Giacomo Ardesio has told Domus, “and a selection of practices that in one way or another roam the perimetral areas to the classic architecture firms, both in terms of format (agencies, collectives) and scope of action, spanning from contemporary art to social design, ephemeral concepts, and participatory design”.
In terms of visible and tangible results, Claudia Mainardi ha sclarified “Concerning its legacy, Spaziale is articulated through different degrees of materiality: some projects will leave small public infrastructures in place, some others are grafted into local activation processes that are already underway, and others have even already independently received additional funding for their future development. All of them, however, are about creating space. Spaziale’s positioning is not an ode to non-built architecture. On the contrary, unlike a conventional architecture exhibition made of reproductions, models, drawings, the content of our project is architecture itself, built and activated in reality”.
Opening image: Concrete Jungle, Venice mainland, photo by Giacomo Bianco